Plovdiv - The Revival Quarter

Plovdiv's Old Town spreads across three steep hills above the Maritsa River, its National Revival houses leaning out over cobblestone streets at angles that look improbable and have held for two centuries. The painted facades date largely from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Bulgarian merchants built wide-windowed timber houses as a display of prosperity. A Roman theatre from the second century still hosts concerts in summer. The city has been continuously inhabited for around eight thousand years.

Where to stay

Hebros Hotel occupies two Revival-era houses on Konstantin Stoilov Street in the Old Town, built around two hundred years ago by a cloth and leather merchant, with the courtyard, fig tree, and timber beams intact. Eight rooms are furnished with nineteenth-century pieces sourced from across Bulgaria, and the restaurant holds Wine Spectator recognition for a cellar of several hundred labels. Hotel Alafrangite, on a cobblestone street close to the Roman amphitheatre, is a historic building with a garden where live music runs through summer. Boutique Hotel Evmolpia is a traditional Bulgarian Renaissance house two minutes from Kapana, at the point where the Old Town and the creative district meet.

What to eat

Pavaj on Zlatarska Street in Kapana serves seasonal dishes from produce grown at their own garden outside the city, alongside Bulgarian wines from regional wineries and rakia from Balkan distilleries. The menu is short, the room is busy at every service, bookings are essential, and payment is cash only. Hemingway, on a quiet street near the Old Town, is more formal, with European and Bulgarian dishes, an extensive wine list, live piano on certain evenings, and a terrace that runs well into summer nights. Puldin, built into a Roman fortress wall, occupies a building that served as a Dervish monastery during the Ottoman period and now serves traditional Bulgarian cuisine in stone walled gardens.

Where to drink

Rahat Tepe sits on a terrace on the slope of Nebet Hill in the Old Town, with a view across rooftops and the Thracian Plain that is best at dusk, when the light goes flat over the plain and the heat stays longer in the hills than on the streets below. Kotka i Mishka, in Kapana, was the first craft beer bar in the district and remains its reference point, with over 150 types and a terrace that fills early. Vino Culture, a few steps from the Roman Stadium, is a compact wine bar focused on Bulgarian and European producers, with rotating small plates and regular tasting events.

How to move

The Old Town is walkable in the straightforward sense, the hill streets steep but short, and most things worth seeing are on foot. The Knyaz Aleksandar I pedestrian boulevard runs through the lower city from the railway station to the Old Town without a road crossing. The Thracian Plain south of the city has vineyards and winemakers within an hour's drive, in a wine region that has been producing since antiquity.