Located on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, Varna is a large port city and seaside resort, as well as being the headquarters of the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine. It is famed for the “Gold of Varna” Thracian jewellery, the oldest of its kind in the world which dates to 4200-4600BC and was discovered in the Varna Necropolis.

The Gold of Varna is exhibited in the Varna Archaeological Museum, together with more than 100,000 objects collected from across Bulgaria. The museum also operates two open-air archaeological sites at the Roman baths within the city centre and the medieval grotto of Aladzha Monastery to the north-east. Other museums of note include the Museum of Ethnography which showcases the diverse cultures of the city within an 1860s Revival-style house, as well as the “Varnenchik” Battle of Varna Museum which details this legendary conflict. The Sea Garden “Primorski” stretches along the waterfront and is a national monument of landscape architecture, with busts dedicated to prominent Bulgarian figures and home of the Varna Zoo. It’s here that the Naval Museum is located, housing a destroyer “Drazki” which famously torpedoed a Turkish cruiser during the Balkans War, as well as the Varna Aquarium which exhibits the Black Sea’s unique flora and fauna. It also boasts the Varna Dolphinarium which is the only one of its kind on the Balkan Peninsula. Varna’s city centre is home to a diverse mix of architectural styles, including Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Art Nouveau and Art Deco, with elaborate Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox churches such as the Dormition of the Mother of God Cathedral.

Varna International Airport has seasonal flights across Europe, while the Central Railway Station connects it with destinations across Bulgaria. A network of buses, trolleybuses and minibuses access all corners of the city, as well as a number of new double-decker sightseeing buses.

In addition to the Varna Necropolis which has been radiocarbon dated to the mid 5th millennium BC, a number of prehistoric settlements have been unearthed in the Varna lakes region dating to the Middle Paleolithic. In 1444 the Battle of Varna was fought here, with the Ottoman Army defeating the Hungarian-Polish and Wallachian armies and setting the stage for the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.