Sozopol

Sozopol is the oldest town on the Bulgarian coast and carries its age like an heirloom. Greek colonists from Miletus founded Apollonia Pontica here around 610 BC, raised a thirteen-metre bronze Apollo above the harbour (Rome later took it as a trophy), and minted coins with an anchor — the town has lived by and for the sea ever since. Renamed Sozopolis, "city of salvation", in Christian times, it gathered a spiritual fame renewed in 2010, when excavations on the St Ivan island opposite the harbour yielded relics venerated as those of John the Baptist, now kept in the town's church of St George.

The old town crowds a rocky peninsula with wooden-jettied fishermen's houses, fig trees and tiny chapels, the ruins of the southern fortress wall dropping straight into the surf. Below, the harbour still lands its catch each morning; Sozopol's painters — the town has drawn artists for a century — set up easels where the nets dry.

Every September the town performs its most gracious ritual: the Apollonia Festival of Arts, Bulgaria's beloved end-of-summer gathering, fills the amphitheatre, churches and galleries with music, theatre, cinema and literature, closing the season the way the ancients might have wished — with Apollo's arts, in Apollo's town, over a wine-dark sea.