Ямбол

Yambol has one building no other Bulgarian city can match: the Bezisten, a fifteenth-century covered market whose four lead domes and thick stone vaults sheltered silk and spice merchants when the Tundzha valley road carried the wealth of two continents. Beautifully restored, it now houses the city's cultural centre — commerce converted to culture in the most literal way — beside the Eski Mosque of the same Ottoman golden age, and squares that keep the easy warmth of Bulgaria's southeast.

The deeper past lies just across the river: Kabile, one of the great cities of ancient Thrace, seat of kings and later a Roman legionary base, spreads its excavated streets and museum beneath a hill sacred to the mother-goddess since deepest antiquity — one of the country's most important archaeological reserves, twenty minutes from the city centre.

Yambol's signature festival is its wildest: Kukerlandia, the international masquerade held each Lenten season, when kukeri from across Bulgaria and mummers from half of Europe fill the streets with bells, horns, fur and fire in rites older than any written record — the city has made itself a European capital of the masked new-year traditions. A drama theatre named for the tragedienne Nevena Kokanova, Yambol's beloved daughter of the screen, an art gallery in the old town and the riverside park round out a city where Thracian kings, Ottoman merchants and horned dancers share the same streets.