Несебър

Nesebar is a museum you can inhabit: an entire ancient town on a rocky peninsula, tied to the mainland by a single narrow isthmus, inscribed whole on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Greeks of Megara founded Mesambria here twenty-six centuries ago on an older Thracian site; parts of their walls still rise from the sea, which has swallowed a third of the ancient city and occasionally returns amphorae to fishermen's nets.

The town's glory is Byzantine and Bulgarian: in the Middle Ages, when Mesembria passed back and forth between empire and tsardom as a prize of war, its citizens built churches with a jeweller's ambition — facades striped in stone and brick, inset with green ceramic rosettes that catch the sun like enamel. Dozens once stood on the little peninsula; the survivors, from the early-Byzantine Old Metropolis to the perfect Christ Pantocrator, give Nesebar a density of medieval architecture matched by few places in Europe. Above them lean the timbered upper storeys of Revival-era fishermen's houses, and the famous windmill keeps watch on the isthmus.

Summer fills the lanes with visitors and the churches with concerts and exhibitions — sacred spaces turned galleries and chamber-music halls. Sunset is Nesebar's own hour, when the stone striping glows and the old town, for a moment, is Mesambria again.