Old Town (Staria Grad)

The old town of Plovdiv — Staria Grad — climbs the three hills that gave the ancient city its Roman name of Trimontium. The streets are steep, paved with large rounded cobblestones, and flanked by the overhanging upper floors of Bulgarian National Revival houses: two-storey wooden-framed buildings in deep indigo, ochre, and terracotta, with carved wooden ceilings inside and long views across the plain from the balconies.

It's a real neighbourhood — restaurants, galleries, and house-museums mingle with actual residents. The Ethnographic Museum (in the Koiumdjioglu House), the Historical Museum, the house-museums of several 19th-century merchants and intellectuals, and a concentration of small restaurants and cafes make it the primary focus for any visit to Plovdiv. The lower slopes connect directly to the Kapana quarter to the west.

things to do neighbourhood
A story
The old town stands on the Trimontium — "Three Hills" — the name the Romans gave Plovdiv when they established their provincial capital here. Two of the three hills are still largely intact as the old town; the third (Markovo Tepe) was quarried away in the 20th century. The neighbourhood's layering of Thracian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Bulgarian Revival architecture is the most compressed historical cross-section in Bulgaria.