Bulgaria Sozopol
1994-1995 summer
With friends I have visited twice magnificent town of Sozopol. It is situated on a cost of a Black sea.It is one of the best tourist attractions of my country.Has nace shops and very good hotels and guest houses to rest on a reasonable prices.We v got one guest house and we have rested in there usually for a week during the summer.At the guest houses there is no breakfast offered but you have nice bakeries all over the place and also small restaurants where they are serving fish with cheeps.The sea its full of small sharks ,sea horses and different types of jeallyfish some of them came from Turkey into the Black sea and they are venomous.You can also see different variety of algae into the waters.The most attractive its the red one.
The town has many galleries and small bars with good music and craft shops. Sozopol is one of the oldest towns on Bulgarian Thrace's Black Sea coast. The first settlement on the site dates back to the Bronze Age. Undersea explorations in the region of the port reveal relics of dwellings, ceramic pottery, stone and bone tools from that era. Many anchors from the second and first millennium BC have been discovered in the town's bay, a proof of active shipping since ancient times. The current town was founded in the 7th century BC by Greek colonists from Miletus as Antheia. The name was soon changed toApollonia, on account of a temple dedicated to Apollo in the town, containing a famous colossal statue of the god Apollo by Calamis, 30 cubits high, transported later to Rome by Lucullus and placed in the Capitol. The coins, which begin in the fourth century BC, bear the name Apollonia and the image of Apollo; the imperial coins, which continue to the first half of the third century AD, and the Tabula Peutinger also contain the name Apollonia; but the "Periplus Ponti Euxini", 85, and the Notitiæ episcopatuum have only the new name Sozopolis. In 1328 Cantacuzene (ed. Bonn, I, 326) speaks of it as a large and populous town. The islet on which it stood is now connected with the mainland by a narrow tongue of land. Its inhabitants, in the past mostly Greeks, lived by fishing and agriculture. The town established itself as a trade and naval centre in the following centuries. It kept strong political and trade relations with the cities of Ancient Greece – Miletus, Athens, Corinth, Heraclea Pontica and the islands Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, etc. Its trade influence in theThracian territories was based on a treaty with the rulers of the Odrysian kingdom dating from the fifth century BC. The symbol of the town – the anchor, present on all coins minted by Apollonia since the sixth century BC, is proof of the importance of its maritime trade. The rich town soon became an important cultural centre. At these times it was called Apollonia Magna. Ruled in turn by the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Ottoman Empires, Sozopol was assigned to the newly independent Bulgaria in the 19th century. At the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence (1821) prominent local personalities were arrested and executed by the Ottoman authorities due to participation in the preparations of the struggle. Almost all of its Greek population was exchanged with Bulgarians from Eastern Thrace in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars. In 2011 the remainings of an ancient Greek settlement, part of Apollonia, were excavated in the small island of St. Kirik (Saint Cerycus) off Sozopolis. Since 1984 Sozopol hosts the Apollonia art festivities every September, which include theatre shows, exhibitions, movies, musical and dance performances, book presentations and other cultural events. |