Lyubimets

Lyubimets lies in the warm southeastern corner of Bulgaria, where the Maritsa river gathers the plain toward the Greek and Turkish borders and the light already feels Mediterranean. The name derives from the word for "beloved", and the town honours it in the most agricultural way possible: this is celebrated market-garden country, whose sun-ripened tomatoes, peppers and above all watermelons are famous across the country — the summer watermelon feast is the sweetest date in the local calendar.

The land around has been generous to archaeologists as well as farmers. The district lies within ancient Thrace's heartland: burial mounds rise from the fields, and the surrounding region — from the sanctuaries of the Sakar hills to the great domed tombs near neighbouring Mezek — belongs to one of Europe's richest Thracian landscapes. Through it all runs the immemorial road from Constantinople to the Balkan interior, which gave the town its historic role as a way-station and market.

Lyubimets keeps the institutions of Bulgarian civic tradition in good order: the chitalishte with its library, folk ensembles and amateur stage anchors cultural life, and the town's festivals braid harvest, folklore and border-country hospitality. It is a place without pretensions and without need of any — a small southern town that feeds the country and remembers the Thracians who farmed the same fields.