5 Days in Veliko Tarnovo

Below the fortress on Nikola Pikolo street, the Tsarevgrad Tarnov center, which locals call the wax museum, tells the story of the Second Bulgarian Empire with dozens of wax figures and dioramas, from the revolt of 1185 to the fall in 1393. It's theatrical, but it puts names and faces to the ruins you're about to see: Asen and Peter, Kaloyan, who captured a Latin emperor, and Ivan Asen II, whose own inscription claims that he ruled from sea to sea.

Cross the stone causeway and walk through the gates of Tsarevets, the fortified hill in a loop of the Yantra where the tsars and the patriarchs of Bulgaria lived from 1185 to 1393. Inside the walls are the foundations of the royal palace, the remains of more than twenty churches and monasteries and hundreds of houses. Much of the wall you walk on was rebuilt in the 20th century, but the setting is real, and from the edges the drop to the river is vertiginous.

Walk down to Baldwin's Tower at the southern tip. Legend says the Latin emperor Baldwin of Flanders was imprisoned here after Tsar Kaloyan defeated the crusaders at Adrianople in 1205; the tower itself is a modern reconstruction. On the northern edge is Execution Rock, from which, tradition says, traitors were thrown into the river; in 1300 Patriarch Joachim III was executed here on the orders of Tsar Theodore Svetoslav. The city held out against the Ottomans for three months in 1393, under Patriarch Evtimiy, the scholar whose Tarnovo literary school reshaped Slavonic writing, before it fell.

At the top of the hill stands the church of the patriarchs of Bulgaria, rebuilt in 1978-81 on medieval foundations. In October it closes at 5:30pm, before the fortress. It's not the frescoes you expect: in 1985 the painter Teofan Sokerov covered its walls with dark, modernist murals of Bulgarian history and the fall of Tarnovo, angular figures in grays, blues and blacks. People either love them or hate them.

From March to October, a panoramic elevator in the church tower lifts you up for the best view of the river's loops and the town on the cliffs (a separate small ticket).

Have a late lunch in one of the mehanas (taverns) on the slopes below Tsarevets. Start with a shopska salad, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers under grated white cheese, and a bowl of tarator, cold yogurt soup with cucumber, dill and walnuts. Then try kavarma, a stew of pork, onions and peppers baked in a clay pot.

After dark, the walls and churches of Tsarevets light up in red, blue and gold, with lasers, music and church bells, telling the story of the Second Empire and its fall in about twenty minutes. The Sound and Light show has run since 1985 and is the town's signature. It now runs only on scheduled evenings, several times a month, and you watch it from a glazed panoramic hall with a terrace facing the hill.

On some holidays, like the city's day on 22 March and Independence Day on 22 September, the show is free to watch from Tsar Asen I Square, by the visitor center. Afterwards, walk to a café on the cliffs for a drink.

Tsar Ivan Asen II built the church of the Holy Forty Martyrs in 1230, after he crushed the army of Epirus at Klokotnitsa, and he carved the story of his victory on a column inside. Next to it stands an even older column, from the time of Khan Omurtag in the 9th century. Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian church, died in Tarnovo in 1236 (or 1235) and was first buried here, before his relics were taken home to Mileševa. Tsars Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II are buried here too, and since 2006 the church has been restored as a royal pantheon.

Seven centuries later, in 1908, Tsar Ferdinand proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria in this church. It's one of the most important places in the country's history.

Walk the lanes of Asenova, a village-like quarter of small houses and gardens below the cliffs. Cross the Vladishki bridge, one of the oldest in town, from 1774, and look out for the little church of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, where, the story goes, Asen and Peter proclaimed the revolt of 1185 that freed Bulgaria from Byzantium. It opens only by appointment from April to October and is closed in winter, but the outside is the reason to come.

Under the northern cliffs of Tsarevets, the church of Sts. Peter and Paul has some of the best medieval murals in Tarnovo, layered from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Some of its columns come from older buildings, and the church survived the Ottoman centuries as the seat of the metropolitan of Tarnovo. Nearby are the remains of a medieval bathhouse, the Shishman Bath.

The funicular stops for lunch between 12 and 1, and so should you. Have a simple meal in one of the small taverns of Asenova or near the lower funicular station: a tarator or a bowl of bob chorba, the bean soup of every Bulgarian canteen, and a salad.

Facing Tsarevets across the river is its twin, Trapezitsa, the second fortified hill of the medieval capital, where the boyars and the church built their own walled town. Archaeologists have found the foundations of 21 churches here, and a small funicular carries visitors up from Asenova; take the 1pm ride and be back at the lower station before the last run at 4pm. In November, when the funicular is off but the hill is still open, a footpath leads up from Asenova.

At the top, paths lead between the foundations, and the view is the reverse of yesterday's: Tsarevets across the river, with its church on top. It's far quieter than the fortress.

With around 18,000 students, Tarnovo has a busy night life for a small town. Order a Boliarka, the local beer, brewed in Tarnovo, and follow the students to the bars around Stambolov street and the old town, or to one of the live music clubs. For dinner, try kebapche or kyufte, cumin-spiced grilled minced meat, with fries and white cheese.

In the 19th century, peasants from Samovodene, a village near Tarnovo, sold their vegetables on this little square, and the craftsmen of the town set up shops around it. Today the Samovodska charshia, the lane of Georgi Rakovski street and the square, is again a street of craftsmen: coppersmiths, potters, woodcarvers, icon painters, a cutler, and shops selling lokum (Turkish delight) and herbs.

Look up at the Hadzhi Nikoli Inn, built in 1858 by Kolyo Ficheto, the self-taught master builder of the Bulgarian Revival, whose bridges, churches and houses you'll see all over town. Its arcaded ground floor has housed a restaurant and a gallery. At the start of the charshia, look out for the House with the Monkey, built by Ficheto in 1849, with a small stone monkey on its facade, one of the symbols of the town.

Down the hill, the Ottoman konak, the governor's building, built by Kolyo Ficheto in 1872, became the birthplace of modern Bulgaria. In 1879 the first Bulgarian parliament met here, and on 16 April (Old Style) it adopted the Tarnovo Constitution, one of the most liberal of its time; two weeks later the Grand National Assembly in Tarnovo elected Alexander of Battenberg as prince. The original building burned down in 1906, and what you see is a reconstruction, now the Museum of the Bulgarian Revival and the Constituent Assembly, with the assembly hall recreated.

Behind it is the Prison Museum, the Ottoman prison of the 1850s with its original cells, where the comrades of Vasil Levski were held.

Next door, the Archaeological Museum shows finds from the medieval capital, from royal jewelry to ceramics, and copies of portraits of the tsars, as well as a collection of Chalcolithic gold from nearby Hotnitsa.

After lunch, walk Gurko street, a narrow cobbled lane of Revival houses on the edge of the cliff, named after the Russian general who rode into Tarnovo on 7 July 1877. The houses hang over the Yantra on wooden beams and look as though a push would send them into the river.

The Sarafkina House, built in 1861 for a rich banker's family, is the best of them: two floors on the street side, five on the river side. Inside, the rooms show how wealthy families lived in the 19th century, with old jewelry, costumes and a lovely salon.

Across the Stambolov bridge, on the meadow in the river bend, rises the Asenevtsi Monument, built in 1985 for the 800th anniversary of the revolt: a tall sword surrounded by four horsemen, the tsars Asen, Peter, Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II. It's huge and very 1980s, and from here you see the whole old town piled up on the cliff opposite. Next to it, the State Art Gallery Boris Denev has Bulgarian paintings, many of Tarnovo itself.

Stay for sunset, when the houses on the cliff turn gold.

Find a restaurant with a terrace over the river: several along Stambolov and Gurko streets have views of the Yantra and Tsarevets. Try sach, meat and vegetables sizzled on a hot clay or iron plate, and a plate of Gornooryahovski sudzhuk, the flat, dry, spiced sausage from Gorna Oryahovitsa down the road, a protected product. A glass of gamza, the red grape of northern Bulgaria, goes with both.

The Preobrazhenski, or Transfiguration, monastery hangs under a cliff above the Yantra gorge. It probably goes back to the 11th century, became an independent monastery in the 14th, was destroyed by the Ottomans and rebuilt from 1825, and its church, built in 1834 to a design by Kolyo Ficheto, who later added the seven-bell belfry, was painted by Zahari Zograf, the great painter of the Bulgarian Revival. His Wheel of Life on the outer wall shows the ages of man going round with the turning of the world.

It's a working monastery, so dress modestly. Across the gorge you can see the white walls of the Holy Trinity monastery, linked to Patriarch Evtimiy. There's no taxi rank at the gate, so keep your taxi waiting for the ride on to Arbanasi, about 12 km back through town.

Arbanasi was a village of rich merchants in the 17th and 18th centuries, who traded from Venice to Persia and enjoyed tax privileges from the Ottomans. They built churches that look like barns from the outside, low and plain, as Ottoman rules required. Inside, every wall is painted.

The Church of the Nativity is the most famous: every inch of its walls is painted, with more than 3,500 figures, from the life of Christ to a great Wheel of Life and portraits of ancient philosophers, painted in stages between 1597 and 1681.

The merchants also built their homes like fortresses, with high stone walls, a heavy gate, a lower floor of stone and few windows, and comfortable wooden rooms above. The Konstantsalieva House is furnished as one of those households was, with rooms for the family, a kitchen and a room for the mother after childbirth. Nearby, the Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel is the other great painted church of the village.

Have a long lunch in one of Arbanasi's tavern gardens. Ask for sarmi, vine or cabbage leaves stuffed with minced meat and rice, kavarma baked in a clay pot, and banitsa, the flaky cheese pastry, with a jar of kiselo mlyako, Bulgarian yogurt, and honey for dessert. Then take a taxi back down to Tarnovo.

If the Sound and Light show didn't run on day one, check if it runs tonight. If not, spend the evening in a mehana near Tsarevets, with a glass of rakia, the grape or plum brandy, and a mish-mash, peppers, tomatoes and white cheese scrambled with eggs.

In a wooded gorge of the Dryanovo river stands a monastery that was the scene of a siege during the April Uprising of 1876, when about 200 rebels held out for nine days against an Ottoman army of thousands. Bacho Kiro and a few dozen others broke out; the rest were killed, and their bones are kept in an ossuary next to the church.

A short walk away is Bacho Kiro, a cave where archaeologists found remains of some of the oldest known modern humans in Europe, about 45,000 years old. A lit path leads through its halls.

Bozhentsi is a village of the Bulgarian Revival preserved almost whole: about a hundred stone and wooden houses with grey stone slab roofs, cobbled lanes and fountains, on a ridge of the Balkan mountains. Local legend says it was founded by a noblewoman, Bozhana, who fled here with her children after the fall of Tarnovo in 1393. It's tiny and quiet, and a good place for lunch.

In a forest valley near Gabrovo, Etar is an open-air museum where the craftsmen actually work. Along a cobbled street of Revival-era houses, potters, coppersmiths, weavers, a goldsmith, a baker and a confectioner make and sell their goods, and the water of the stream drives the old mills, a fulling mill and a sawmill.

Buy a lokum or a sweet from the confectioner, watch the water-powered machines and the craftsmen at work, then drive back to Tarnovo (about an hour).

For the last night, choose a restaurant on Samovodska charshia or the cliffs and order the full Bulgarian table: a shopska, tarator or a lyutenitsa with bread, kavarma or lamb, and tikvenik, a pumpkin pastry with walnuts and cinnamon, for dessert. Say nazdrave.