Varna is Bulgaria's maritime capital: the great Black Sea city, with a long seafront promenade, the leafy Sea Garden, city beaches, an elegant centre full of life and, in its museum, one of the most astonishing treasures in human history: the oldest gold in the world, worked some 6,500 years ago. It is at once a bathing town, a port, the home of the navy and a university city, with a young, cosmopolitan feel that makes it the country's 'summer capital'.
Its jewel is the Archaeological Museum, which holds the gold of the Varna Necropolis, with more than three thousand gold objects found in graves from the 5th millennium BC: the oldest known processed goldwork, older than the pyramids and than Sumer. A few steps away, the imposing Roman Baths recall ancient Varna, the Greek Odessos, while the Sea Garden — one of the largest coastal parks in Europe — invites you to stroll among statues, museums and sea views.
This guide walks you through Varna in practical terms: what to see and what its museums cost, where the best city-centre beaches are, how to get there by plane, train or bus, how to get around the city and what day trips to add, from the Aladzha rock monastery to the enigmatic Stone Forest. A city where the oldest history in Europe lives alongside the best beach life on the Black Sea.
Varna is one of the oldest cities in Europe. Near here, the Varna Necropolis revealed the oldest processed gold in the world, about 6,500 years old, evidence of a surprisingly complex Chalcolithic society. In the 6th century BC, Greek colonists from Miletus founded the city of Odessos, a prosperous Black Sea trading colony, which was later Roman and Byzantine; the great Roman Baths remain from that era. Under a Slavic name, Varna was a Bulgarian and Byzantine stronghold in the Middle Ages, and in 1444 its walls saw the battle of Varna, where King Władysław III of Poland and Hungary fell against the Ottomans. After centuries of Ottoman rule and the liberation of 1878, Varna developed as a port and a seaside resort, and today it is the capital of the Bulgarian Black Sea. We tell all of that on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Black Sea shore was colonised by the Greeks 2,600 years ago and holds everything from the Thracian gold of Varna to the Byzantine churches of Nesebar, among old fishing towns and modern resorts.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Varna's story begins with a discovery that forced whole textbooks to be rewritten. In October 1972, while a worker was digging a trench on the outskirts of the city, a grave full of gold objects came to light. The archaeologists who rushed to the site found something extraordinary: a Copper Age (Chalcolithic) necropolis from the mid-5th millennium BC, in other words around 6,500 years old. And in its graves, more than three thousand gold objects weighing several kilos in total: the oldest worked gold known anywhere in the world, more than a thousand years older than the gold of Egypt or Mesopotamia.
The Varna Necropolis revealed much more than gold. The way the riches were spread across the graves (some poor, others loaded with treasure, and one in particular, that of the so-called 'powerful man', with diadems, bracelets, a gold-covered bow and even a penis sheath) showed that this prehistoric society was already deeply hierarchical, with elites, power and long-distance trade. It was one of the first European civilisations to master gold and copper metallurgy, as part of what is known as the Varna culture, which flourished thanks to its position on the Black Sea and along trade routes.
That treasure, now on display at the Varna Archaeological Museum, makes the city a key place for understanding the origins of European civilisation, millennia before the Greeks and Romans.
Thousands of years after that prehistoric gold, the Bay of Varna drew the peoples of the Mediterranean once again. Around the 6th century BC, Greek settlers from Miletus, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Odessos here, one of the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus). Odessos thrived as a trading port, dealing in grain, wine, fish and slaves with the Thracians of the interior and with the rest of the Greek world, and it minted its own coins. Greek and Thracian cultures lived side by side there, and its temples and necropolises left remarkable traces.
As Rome advanced through the Balkans, Odessos was absorbed into the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC and enjoyed a new golden age within the province of Moesia. The city gained walls, temples, a forum and, above all, large public baths built in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD: the Roman Thermae, whose monumental ruins can still be visited and are among the largest surviving in the Balkans. Odessos was also an early Christian centre with its own bishopric, and it remained an important city under the Byzantine Empire, Rome's heir in the East.
The Slavic name Varna appears in records from the Early Middle Ages, when Slavs began settling the region and it came into the orbit of the emerging Bulgarian state.
During the Middle Ages, Varna was a stronghold fought over by the Byzantine Empire and the successive Bulgarian states. It was part of both the First and the Second Bulgarian Empire, served as a port and trading city, and changed hands several times as the Balkan wars ebbed and flowed. Its port made it valuable: goods from the interior went out through it, and goods from all over the Black Sea came in, including those of Genoese and Venetian merchants.
The most famous medieval episode took place in 1444. By then, the Ottoman Turks already controlled much of the Balkans, and a great Christian crusade, organised by the papacy and led by King Władysław III, who ruled both Poland and Hungary, together with the great general John Hunyadi, marched east to halt the Ottoman advance. On 10 November 1444, Christians and Ottomans clashed before the walls of Varna in a decisive battle. The army of Sultan Murad II won, and the young King Władysław died in the fighting; history has remembered him ever since as Władysław 'Warneńczyk' ('of Varna'). The defeat sealed the fate of the Balkans: a few years later Constantinople would fall (1453), and all of Bulgaria would remain firmly under Ottoman rule.
Under the Ottoman Empire, Varna became a major fortress and military port, the scene of successive wars, especially the conflicts between the Ottomans and the Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Bulgaria's liberation came with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878; Varna became part of the new Principality of Bulgaria in 1878, after centuries of Ottoman rule. With its large natural harbour, the city quickly became the young state's main outlet to the sea and an economic engine. A modern port was built, along with the railway linking it to the interior and public and religious buildings that symbolised the national revival, such as the great Cathedral of the Dormition, built between 1880 and 1886.
At the same time, Varna discovered its calling as a summer destination. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Sea Garden was laid out, one of the largest coastal parks in Europe, and the city began to attract bathers and spa-goers thanks to its mild climate, beaches and waters. In the first half of the 20th century, Varna established itself as Bulgaria's great seaside resort, with hotels, a casino and a lively social scene, and for a time it went by other names before returning to Varna.
The socialist period (1944-1989) transformed the city once again: the port and the shipbuilding industry were expanded, and the big resort complexes along the coast (Golden Sands, Albena, Sunny Day) were built for mass tourism from the Eastern Bloc, turning Varna into a holiday destination for millions of visitors from all over Eastern Europe. It also grew as a university and cultural city, hosting music and film festivals.
After the fall of communism in 1989 and the transition of the 1990s, Varna has reasserted itself as Bulgaria's maritime capital and one of the most dynamic cities in the country. Bulgaria's entry into the European Union in 2007 opened the coast to more international tourism, and today the city combines its role as a major commercial port and home of the Bulgarian Navy with that of a beach destination, university centre and cultural hub, with summer festivals, theatres and a buzzing nightlife.
Varna offers visitors an unusual range: in the morning you can gaze at the oldest gold in the world in the Archaeological Museum or wander among the ruins of the Roman Thermae of Odessos; at midday, lose yourself in the Sea Garden, with its museums, aquarium and viewpoints; and in the afternoon, head down to the city beaches for a swim in the Black Sea. A short distance away lie the Aladzha rock monastery, carved into the cliff, and the mysterious pillars of the Stone Forest.
Eight millennia after those prehistoric communities worked humanity's first gold beside this bay, Varna still lives facing the sea. It is at once one of the oldest cities in Europe and the most summery in Bulgaria: a place where the continent's deep history lives alongside the cheerful bustle of the coast.
