Bulgaria to Open for Tourists Restored Euxinograd Palace, Kastritsi Fortress on Black Sea Coast in Spring 2016

The Euxinograd Palace in the Black Sea residence of the Bulgarian government, and the partly restored ruins of the ancient and medieval fortress of Kastritsi located on the residence estate will be opened for tourists as of the spring of 2016.

The restoration of the Euxinograd Palace, which is located on the Black Sea coast to the north of the city of Varna, was supposed to be completed by October 31, 2015, but have been delayed, reports local newspaper Cherno More citing the management of the government residence.

The restoration of the French-style Euxinograd Residence has been carried out with BGN 9.8 (app. EUR 4.9 million) in EU funding under Operational Program “Regional Development”.

In addition to the restoration of the Euxinograd Palace and its park, the effort includes the partial restoration of the Late Antiquity Byzantine and medieval Bulgarian fortress.

Kastritsi was a major and thriving city during the Late Medieval Ages, and the annual excavations of its ruins keep yielding new exciting archaeological finds (see below).

The fortress and its buildings have been especially well preserved because it is inside the enclosed territory of the Euxinograd Residence of the Bulgarian government, which has been with limited public access since the end of the 19^th century.

This has prevented treasure hunters and looters from damaging it, unlike what they have been doing to thousands of other archaeological and historical sites all over Bulgaria.

The latest interesting finds from the archaeological digs at the Kastritsi Fortress have been coins of the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo – a dynasty of Cumans (a medieval people who inhabited the steppes north of the Black Sea in the Middle Ages) which ruled Egypt and the Levant for more than two centuries in the Late Middle Ages, until its Sultanate was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517 AD.

The Mamluk coins discovered in the fortress of Kastritsi near Bulgaria’s Varna were most probably brought by merchants trading in the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Learn more about the history of the Kastritsi Fortress in the Background Infonotes below.

The management of the Euxinograd Residence of the Bulgarian government is determined to turn the place into a highly successful destination for cultural tourism.

The construction of the Euxinograd Palace started during the reign of Knyaz (King) Alexander I Batenberg (r. 1879-1886), shortly after Bulgaria’s National Liberation from the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1878. However, the palace was completed and inaugurated only in 1892.

The present restoration works have been designed to reconstruct the original appearance of the interior of the Euxinograd Palace on the first and second floor, and to turn the third floor into a museum.

Much of the original Chippendale, Rococo, and “Louis XVI” furniture has been restored, and will be presented in the rooms used by the royal family of the Third Bulgarian Tsardom.

The former stables of the royal family of the Third Bulgarian Tsardom (1878-1946) will also be turned into a museum while the building of the guardsmen will be refashioned into a tourist information center.

The restorations include part of the ruins of the Kastritsi Fortress as well as the residence park, which has an area of 900 decares (app. 222 acres).

The Euxinograd Palace on the Black Sea coast north of Varna is the oldest residence of the Bulgarian rulers from the Third Bulgarian Tsardom outside of the capital Sofia.

Also check out our other recent stories about the archaeological excavation of the Kastritsi Fortress in Euxinograd:

Archaeologists Find Coins of Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in Kastritsi Fortress near Bulgaria’s Varna

Archaeologists Find Medieval Procession Cross, Bulgarian, Ottoman Coin Treasure at Black Sea Fortress Kastritsi

Bulgarian Archaeologists Unearth Entire Residential Quarter in Medieval Fortress Kastritsi on Black Sea Coast

Background Infonotes:

The Late Antiquity Byzantine and medieval Bulgarian fortress and city of Kastritsi is located to the northeast of the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna, in the Euxinograd Residence of the Bulgarian government on the northern coast of the Bay of Varna. It occupies the St. George (St. Yani) Cape. The fortress of Kastritsi was built by the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire in the 5^th century AD, and was expanded in the 6^th century AD. It was destroyed in the barbarian invasions of the Slavs and Avars in the early 7^th century AD, and was abandoned. The Kastritsi Fortress was restored in the middle of the 13^th century AD by the Second Bulgarian Empire (1186-1396 AD), and emerged as a medieval Black Sea city. The preserved medieval fortress walls rises to up to 3 meters. The outer fortress wall has a total of 5 rectangular fortress towers with a diameter of 5.5 meters, and a three-meter wide gate. The fortress’s keep is a rectangular multi-story tower located in its western corner. The inside of the fortress features the ruins of a city from the High and Late Middle Ages, including an entire densely populated residential quarter of stone-masonry homes, and a one-nave, one-apse church.

It is believed that Kastritsi is one of the Late Antiquity Byzantine fortresses on the Black Sea coast described by the 6^th century AD Byzantine chronicler Procopius of Caesarea (ca. 500-ca. 560 AD) though its name was not mentioned. The Kastritsi Fortress was described in the early 14^th century by cartographers from Genoa as in the High and Late Middle Ages it had thriving commercial relations with the Italian city-states Genoa and Venice. Kastritsi’s fortifications protected an area of 20 decares (app. 5 acres). The discovered skeletons of men, women, and children indicated that the city’s population was slaughtered by the invading Ottoman Turks who conquered the Second Bulgarian Empire at the end of the 14^th century AD. The Turks settled Kastritsi briefly but abandoned the city in the 15^th century (the most recent coins discovered there are from 1404 AD). Some Bulgarian archaeologists have hypothesized that the Ottoman Turks might have vacated the fortress of Kastritsi because of the raids of the Vlachs (Wallachians) from the north.

In the Late Middle Ages, Kastritsi was a typical medieval city with narrow streets and large homes. The archaeological remains of the medieval homes, streets, churches, and fortifications of Kastritsi are very well preserved allowing the Bulgarian archaeologists to discover lots of pottery vessels, metal tools, decorations, and over 2,500 coins. If it is researched more thoroughly, conserved, and exhibited, Kastritsi has the potential to show a fully preserved medieval Bulgarian city with a major potential for historical and cultural tourism, according to archaeologists.

The Kastritsi City and Fortress north of Bulgaria’s Varna is especially well preserved because it is inside the enclosed territory of the Euxinograd Residence of the Bulgarian government, which has been with limited public access since the end of the 19^th century, meaning that treasure hunters and looters could not do damage to it, unlike what they have done to thousands of other archaeological and historical sites all over Bulgaria. The Euxinograd Residence was built on lands that the first ruler of Liberated Bulgaria, i.e. the Third Bulgarian Tsardom, Knyaz Alexander I Batenberg, received as a gift from the Greek Bishopric in Varna after Bulgaria’s Liberation from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. Thus, access to the site has been limited since 1890, and Kastritsi is said to be the only Bulgarian medieval city with a preserved port which has not seen any construction after the Late Middle Ages.

The Kastritsi Fortress and City was first excavated in 1899 by Czech-Bulgarian archaeologist Karel Skorpil, who, together with his brother Hermann Skorpil, is the founder of modern-day Bulgarian archaeology. Its most recent archaeological excavations have been conducted every summer since 2004 by archaeologists from the Varna Museum of Archaeology (Varna Regional Museum of History) led by its Director, Prof. Valentin Pletnyov. The recent archaeological discoveries there include a treasure of 166 silver coins of Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander (r. 1331-1371 AD) and his son Mihail Asen, who was declared a “Co-Tsar” by Ivan Alexander in 1331 upon the latter’s assumption of the Bulgarian throne. Mihail Asen died in a battle against the Ottoman Turks near Sredets (today’s Sofia) in 1355 AD. The treasure in question is one of the largest medieval Bulgarian treasures discovered in recent years. In addition to these and many other Bulgarian coins, other0 treasure finds from Kastritsi include Byzantine, Tartar, Vlachian, Moldavian, Venetian, and Ottoman Turkish coins. These include a treasure of silver coins of Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I “The Lighting”(r. 1389-1402 AD) and of Wallacian ruler Mircea the Elder (Mircea I of Wallachia (r. 1386-1418 AD) who held the region of Dobrudzha (today’s Northeast Bulgaria and Southeast Romania) in the early 15^th century. The finds also include a rare gold coin from the Antiquity minted in the Ancient Greek colony of Callatis (today’s Mangalia in Romania) during the reign of Lysimachus (r. 306-281 BC), one of Alexander I the Great’s generals, and one of his diadochi (successors) who became King of Macedon, Thrace, and Asia Minor.

The Bulgarian archaeologists have excavated more than one-fifth of the territory of the Kastritsi Fortress, have started some conservation efforts, and have opened part of the site for tourists.