Stara Zagora's cultural offerings include numerous museums, libraries, art galleries, a brass band, several cinemas, sport stadiums, an equestrian training center, Roman ruins, and many lovely parks including the Ayazmoto Park, which dominates the northern section of the city with 939 acres of exotic trees. There is also an astronomical observatory, a zoo, numerous children's playgrounds, and a sports complex plus an open-air theater, where the National Festival of Gypsy Music and Songs is held each summer. Stara Zagora's National Opera Theater, founded in 1928, is the first provincial opera company in Bulgaria and continues to provide world class operas.
A Stara Zagora native, Milen Slavov, is an accordionist now living in Mississippi, USA with his wife Zhivka Papancheva, a folk singer from Strandzha. Their website includes a catalogue of several CDs and books for sale, music clips and a page about the Filip Kutev Music School in Kotel, Bulgaria (Milen's alma mater).
1.5 km west of Stara Zagora there are remains of the Neolithic and later ages. You may visit a museum that houses the pottery and goddess statues found at the site.
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All Bulgaria Virtual Guide - Travel to Stara Zagora |
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A City of Culture The population of Stara Zagora is slightly under 200,000. The city has convenient railway connections to the biggest Bulgarian cities - Sofia, Vama, Bourgas, Plovdiv, etc. The Tracia highway and the network of second class roads provides quick access by car to all major Bulgarian cities, and to Turkey and Greece. The distance to Sofia is 231 km. It is a vital thriving community with tree-lined streets, lively cafes and beautiful garden parks. |
City of straight streets, lime trees and poetsStara Zagora is an old city, situated at the foot of the Sredna Gora mountains. The town was founded in the 6th millennium BC. Its long existence was marked with many names - Beroe, Augusta Trayana, Vereya, Irinopolis, Borouy, Eski Zagra, Zheleznik, Stara Zagora, and also with many variants of those names. The first name Beroe is interpreted as "a market town", which was then inhabited by the Thracian tribe Pirogers. The town was reconstructed and fortified during Roman rule. It was renamed to Augusta Trayana after Emperor Trajanus. It was mentioned under that name in Greek and Roman inscriptions, and also on local bronze coins. The Stara Zagora Regional Economic Development Agency says Stara Zagora is a "city of straight streets, lime trees and poets". The city is the birthplace of Geo Milev (Georgi Milev Kassabov - 1895 - 1925), the well-known Bulgarian poet whose verses on the subject of the 1923 Vladaya Uprising caused his untimely death. Stara Zagora is located in South Bulgaria, in the Upper Tracian Valley, at the crossroads of the routes from Plovdiv to the Black Sea and from the Danube to the Aegean. The trees referred to as "lime" are more correctly known to Westerners as "Tilia europaea" or Linden, and the tree is in no way related to the citrus lime fruit.
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