Plovdiv; Sunday, 13 October, 2024

The previous days walking meant that I slept like a log and was woken by my alarm, rather than my usual waking up a long time before hand. I had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel before wandering out and down to a nearby pedestrian subway under the main north-south road though the city (that goes in a tunnel under the Ancient Theatre). The subway is notable for being the site of yet more archaeological discovery when they were constructing it, finding a building from late antiquity with lots of mosaics on the floor – many still in good condition. The site is now open as a museum to be able to look at the mosaics, and outside in the underpass itself the original Roman flagstones of a road make up the pedestrian route.

Back over in the centre of town I headed back over to the main shopping street to view another small section of the ancient stadium which was uncovered during the construction of a new H&M store, which allowed the foundations to be excavated revealing parts of the stands and stadium floor. The rest of the store has been built around the relics – with views down into them from several points in the store. You can also head down into the ruins and have the weird view of ancient Roman building stones overlooked by the latest in ladies’ fashion and leisurewear.

From there I had a long wander through the centre of town and eventually up the Clock Tower Hill. This hill is unique in that from the top you can see all of the rest of the surviving hills of the city (and the strip mall where the seventh one would have been). I spent a bit of time wandering around the top taking in the views and contemplating walking over to the Red Army Soldier monument on the top of the neighbouring hill, until I checked the route on Google maps to see the ascent up the hill was at least double that I’d had to go through getting up this hill – and that I’d have to head all the way back down to town level before climbing again, so I scrapped that idea and instead headed down the back of the hill towards the Regional Archaeological Museum.

Just before getting to the museum, I stopped off at the Unification Monument. The statue was built in 1985 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the merger of Eastern Romelia (capital, Plovdiv), with the rest of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Naturally for a statue commissioned in the early 1980s in any country that prefixed itself with the phrase People’s Republic, it has a certain Soviet feel to it.

Next door to the monument is the Regional Archaeological Museum, which houses a massive collection of finds from the area in and around Plovdiv. With a continuous occupation going back at least 8,000 years the city is the longest continuously occupied city in Europe and one of the oldest on the planet so naturally there is quite a bit of archaeology on display in the space that they have available – to put it in context they have just one small room that deals with everything from post-Roman to late Middle-Ages, other places that’s the entire museum!

By the time I’d finished off looking round the museum I realised that it was already early afternoon and I hadn’t had lunch so I headed back in towards the city centre and grabbed a bit to eat in a nice restaurant close to the stadium before heading back up into the old town to tick off a couple more of the museums and old houses including the Ethnographic Museum and the House-Museum Kilanti before heading over to the most important site in the city, the Ancient Theatre of Philippopolis.

One of the best preserved ancient Roman theatres in the world it’s still in regular use as a cultural venue hosting theatre and concert performances. It had a long and distinguished history until it was attacked and damaged by Atilla the Hun in the 5th century and then slowly faded into obscurity until rushing back into everyone’s sight following a landslide in the 1970s that revealed the structure again, resulting in the excavation and restoration works that have returned it to it’s current state.

I spent quite a long time wandering around the site – you can explore virtually every corner of the exposed site from the seating to the stage and backdrop – before heading back down into the lower part of the town to take in some more Roman remains in the Forum and Odeon complexes, again found during construction work – this time for a new central Post Office.

From the Odeon it was only a short walk back to the hotel so I headed back there to freshen up for a bit before heading out again a little later to find somewhere to eat, and, after dinner, I had a bit more of a wander through the Forum and Odeon, as they are open and floodlit 24/7 given they form the main pedestrian route into the city centre from the Eastern side of town.

Quite a few night photos later I headed back to the hotel for another good nights sleep.