35 Best Sights in Bulgaria

Vidin’s main cathedral is an Orthodox Christian church and an important house of workshop for locals. While the original late-17th-century structure was wooden, what you see today is made of stone and was built between 1885 and 1926. Sveti Dimitar is believed to be Bulgaria's second largest church; its central dome is 33 meters tall. The church has undergone some restoration to its icons and frescoes, which are in good condition.

A stupendous structure, Tsarvets was the Second Bulgarian Empire's fortress from 1185 to 1393. The royal palaces were housed here, along with hundreds of quarters for the members of the court, guards, and servants, churches, and workshops. Tsarevets as you see today is not the original–it's been sacked and destroyed many times–but a faithful restoration that was undertaken between 1930 and 1981. The views from the top of the fortress are magnificent. If you don't want to climb, there's an elevator (2 leva per person) to the top of the bell tower.

Tours in English can be arranged at the Tourist Information Centre (5 ul. Hristo Botev, +359–62–622–148) for 10 leva per person.

With a population of around 300,000, Varna is by far the biggest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. As well as being a good place to base yourself, the city has several interesting museums. The best of the bunch is its fascinating Museum of Archaeology, a palatial hall that contains more than 100,000 objects displayed in 39 rooms. All of the exhibits were found locally and bear witness to the Black Sea region being one of the World's earliest and longest-standing 'cradles of civilization', stretching back to flint tools from Mesolithic settlements around nearby Varna Lake. The museum building itself has a history, as it was originally constructed as a girls high school in the late 19th century. But the museum has been on-site almost as long, having first opened here in a single room in 1906 before eventually taking over the whole facility.

This museum has a main building and two outposts. Start at the Ul. Tsar Simeon Veliki museum to get your ticket, see its collection of more than 3,000 ancient coins and learn about Bulgaria from the 19th century to the present. One outpost is the Konaka Museum(Ul. Obshtinska 2, +359–94–601–713), housed in an 18th-century Turkish police station. The exhibition here covers Bulgarian history up to the 19th century and on display are a slew of antiquities ranging from ceramic and clay pieces to gold jewelry. The Historical Museum's second outpost is the Krastata Kazarma(Ul. Knyaz Boris 26, +395–94–601–709), a two-story military barrack built in 1801 for the Ottoman army. Today it's where the museum's ethnography exhibits are held, showcasing a collection of 19th-century and early 20th-century objects such as fine filigree hairpins.

Combo ticket for the museum and Baba Vida Fortress are 5 leva.

There are fewer than 1,000 Jews living in Bulgaria now, and most of them in Sofia, but at one time Vidin had a sizeable Jewish population who came mostly from Spain in the late 15th century. This neo-Gothic synagogue opened in 1894 and at the time was considered a very grand structure, with stained-glass windows and intricate stonework. The then-Communist government seized the building during WWII and began restoration in 1983, until the collapse of the regime government left the synagogue without a roof. Though there's been talk by the Ministry of Culture of repairing the synagogue and turning it into a museum, the site remains an abandoned ruin. Though it's a shell of the grand building it once was, it remains a small but important slice of Vidin's history.