Стара Загора

Stara Zagora calls itself the city of straight streets, linden trees and poets — a formula earned in fire. Burned to the ground in the war of 1877, the city was redrawn on a strict grid by the architect Lubor Bayer and replanted with lindens whose June blossom still perfumes every boulevard; the rebirth from ashes remains the city's founding modern myth. Its deeper past is astonishing even by Bulgarian standards: the Neolithic Dwellings Museum preserves two houses of the sixth millennium BC with their ovens and vessels in place — among the best-preserved prehistoric homes in Europe — while Roman Augusta Traiana left a forum complex whose amphitheatre seats concerts again at the city's heart.

The poets are real: Geo Milev, the expressionist whose poem "September" cost him his life in 1925, was raised here and his house-museum keeps his round spectacles and rebel manuscripts; the lyric classic Kiril Hristov was born here.

So is the music. In 1925 Stara Zagora founded the first opera outside Sofia — today's State Opera Stara Zagora — a company with a proud tradition of premieres of Bulgarian works, joined by a symphonic season, a puppet theatre of national rank and the beloved lindens' festival. Add the Bereketska mound, the medieval churches and the zoo in Ayazmoto park, and the straight streets prove anything but plain.