Seuthopolis

The capital of the Thracian Odrysian kingdom in the late 4th century BCE, built by King Seuthes III. It was excavated in the 1940s and 1950s, then submerged by the Koprinka reservoir when the dam was completed in 1954. The site is now underwater 20 metres below the surface near the village of Koprinka, west of Kazanlak.

There is nothing to see in person — just the lake. But the periodic proposals to raise the ruins have kept the site in the news, and the Kazanlak museum displays finds from the excavations: gold jewellery, vases, fragments of inscriptions. For Thracian-history enthusiasts, the museum is well worth an hour before driving on to the Tomb.

things to do sight
A story
Seuthopolis was discovered in the 1940s during construction of the Koprinka reservoir, then deliberately flooded once excavation finished. A Bulgarian architect, Zheko Tilev, proposed in 2005 to raise the city by building a circular dam around it and lowering the water level — a thirty-metre stone wall enclosing the ruins. The project has remained on paper for two decades.