Tourism: Bulgaria to spend 300M leva on restoring castles, ancient sites
Mon, May 07 2012 08:37 CET
byThe Sofia Echo staff
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Tourism: Bulgaria to spend 300M leva on restoring castles, ancient sites
Etura

Photo: Bissera Lenkova
Tourism: Bulgaria to spend 300M leva on restoring castles, ancient sites
Arbanassi

Photo: Assen Tonev
Tourism: Bulgaria to spend 300M leva on restoring castles, ancient sites

Assenovgrad fortress
Photo: Maria Subotinova
Bulgaria is to spend about 300 million leva (about 150 million euro) in European Union funds over the next two years restoring 11 castles and a large number of ancient sites that are popular tourist attractions.

Among the sites where restoration and development work will be done are the museum village of Etura, former capital Pliska, the Madara Horseman cliff carving near the town of Shoumen, Arbanassi, the Assenovgrad fortress, Magura and Ledenika caves and the Belogradchik rocks.

Regional Development and Public Works Minister Liliana Pavlova said that 61 municipalities would be involved in implementing the projects, with their tasks including improving infrastructure near tourist attractions, a report by television station bTV said.

For example, near the village of Belchin – in western Bulgaria, 15km from Samokov and 50km from Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia – there is a fortress dating back 1700 years. The fortress, with walls 350m long and with six towers, would within two years be restored to its former appearance, according to the report.

Close to the fortress walls, archaeologists found the remains of three churches, said to date back to the same period as the fortress, seen as proof that Christianity had come to the area at the time of Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great.

Samokov municipality is to be given close to six million leva to develop the site into a tourist attraction, with a museum and reconstructions portraying ancient life, the report said.

That could only be a positive thing provided the money actually gets used for its intended purpose, but being a bit of a canny sort, I can see lots of new, black BMWs and Audi's appearing on the restoration sites.

I get so frustrated by much of the Bulgarian attitude to their heritage sites, not the "
little people"
but the powers that be. There is so much history and so many historical sites, they have just never used it to their advantage to encourage tourism. I too hope the money goes in the right places and they manage tourism well.