The oldest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv, is Europe’s newest Capital of Culture, with a year to celebrate its status and to develop ongoing awareness of its many treasures and its diverse peoples. It’s the first time a Bulgarian city has had the honor.
Plovdiv, which also claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe, with more than 6,000 years of history, including periods of Thracian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rule, which have left it with many landmarks, and significant Turkish, Roma, Armenian, Greek and Jewish communities.
The city, with 340,000 residents, has scheduled over 350 cultural events for the year, and made the New York Times list of 52 places to go in 2019. It shares the Capital of Culture title for the year with the Italian city of Matera.
