Shumen

Shumen sits at the centre of Bulgaria's founding geography: within an hour's radius lie Pliska and Preslav, the first two capitals of the Bulgarian state, and the Madara Rider — the eighth-century horseman carved a hundred metres up a sheer cliff, UNESCO-listed and chosen by national vote as the global symbol of Bulgaria. Above the city, the colossal concrete Monument to 1300 Years of Bulgaria (1981) answers the medieval rider with cubist khans and tsars visible from twenty kilometres.

The city below has a genius for beginnings. In the nineteenth century, enriched by crafts and enlivened by Hungarian and Polish exiles — Lajos Kossuth's house is a museum — Shumen staged the first Bulgarian theatrical performance and fielded the first Bulgarian orchestra, planted the first vines of organised secular music teaching, and in 1882 founded the country's oldest brewery, whose name still means beer to Bulgarians. Dobri Voynikov, playwright and conductor, embodied that founding generation.

Its greatest musical gift came later: Pancho Vladigerov, Bulgaria's foremost composer, grew up here, and the city honours him with his family house-museum and the international piano competition bearing his name. With the Ottoman-era Tombul Mosque — the largest in Bulgaria — the fortress above the plateau, and a season anchored by the symphony orchestra and the Mladost hall, Shumen wears thirteen centuries lightly.