Pleven

For five months in 1877, the eyes of Europe were fixed on Pleven. Osman Pasha's entrenched army threw back three Russian and Romanian assaults before hunger ended the siege — a defence studied in military academies ever since, and a turning point on the road to Bulgaria's liberation. The city keeps that memory on a grand scale: the Pleven Panorama, raised for the centenary in 1977, surrounds the visitor with a 360-degree painted battlefield in the tradition of Borodino's panorama, while the St George the Conqueror Chapel-Mausoleum in the city centre holds the bones of the fallen, and Skobelev Park preserves the redoubts where the fighting was fiercest.

Pleven's gentler face lies just beyond: the Kaylaka park, where limestone cliffs, lakes and Roman ruins of ancient Storgosia make one of Bulgaria's most beautiful urban parks, and the surrounding plateau, heart of a celebrated wine region — the town hosts the country's oldest wine and vine research institute, with a museum devoted to the grape.

Musical Pleven honours its own: the Pleven Philharmonic ranks among Bulgaria's leading orchestras, and the city's concert life culminates in the Katya Popova Laureate Days, the festival named for the radiant Pleven-born soprano whose career European stages mourned when it was cut short in 1966. A city of cannon and cantilena — Pleven contains both.