Sozopol is usually sold as a beach town with a pretty old quarter. That undersells it. People have lived on this small rocky peninsula for thousands of years, and the town has changed its name, its language and its rulers more than once. Knowing a little of that story turns a walk through the old town into something else.
Before the Greeks
The oldest traces are under water. Surveys in the harbour have turned up the remains of dwellings, pottery and tools of stone and bone from the Bronze Age. Stone anchors recovered from the bay show that ships were calling here long before the place had a Greek name.
Apollonia, city of Apollo
In the 7th century BC (the traditional date is around 610 BC) colonists from Miletus, in Asia Minor, founded a city on the peninsula. It was first called Antheia and soon became Apollonia, after its patron god. Later writers added "Pontica", meaning on the Black Sea, to tell it apart from the other Apollonias of the Greek world. The city grew rich on trade between the Thracian interior and the Aegean. Its emblem was the anchor, which appears on Apollonian coins from the 6th century BC onwards.
Its most famous possession was a bronze statue of Apollo by the sculptor Calamis, about 13 metres high, set up in the 5th century BC. In 72 BC the Roman general Marcus Lucullus took the city and shipped the statue to Rome as a trophy. It disappeared in later centuries, and nobody knows what became of it.
Sozopolis, the "city of salvation"
Under Roman and then Byzantine rule the pagan name gave way to a Christian one: Sozopolis. Through the Middle Ages the town passed back and forth between Byzantium and the Bulgarian state. Monasteries stood on the islands and headlands around the bay. The best known, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was on St Ivan Island. It was built in the 5th–6th century on the site of an older sanctuary and rebuilt between 1262 and 1310.
The town fell to the Ottomans in 1453, the same year as Constantinople. In 1629 the island monastery was pulled down so that pirates could not use it as a shelter. Sozopol shrank into a town of fishermen and winegrowers, still largely Greek-speaking.
The wooden houses
What visitors photograph today comes mostly from that quieter period. The houses of the old town date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The pattern repeats from street to street: a ground floor of stone, used for storing nets, barrels and salted fish, and above it a living floor clad in weathered timber that juts out over the lane. The streets are narrow because the peninsula is small. Nothing here was planned for traffic.
In 1974 the old town was declared an architectural and archaeological reserve. Unlike Nessebar up the coast, Sozopol is not on the UNESCO World Heritage list, but the protection has kept the peninsula's skyline low and its houses intact.
The 20th century, and a find in 2010
Sozopol became part of the modern Bulgarian state in the late 19th century. After the Balkan Wars most of its Greek inhabitants left for Greece, and Bulgarian refugees from Eastern Thrace settled in their place. Since 1984 the town has hosted the Apollonia arts festival, held every year around the turn of August and September.
Then came the summer of 2010. Archaeologists excavating the monastery church on St Ivan Island found a small marble reliquary under the altar, with a few bone fragments inside. Radiocarbon dating later placed the bones in the 1st century AD and pointed to a man from the Middle East. Whether they belong to John the Baptist cannot be proven. The date is at least consistent with the tradition, and the find put Sozopol in newspapers around the world.
The island itself measures 0.66 square kilometres, which makes it the largest Bulgarian island in the Black Sea. Its lighthouse was built in 1884, and since 1993 the island has been a nature reserve.
What to see in the old town
- The Archaeological Museum. Greek pottery, anchors and finds from the necropolis of Apollonia. Small, and worth an hour.
- The Southern Fortress Wall and Tower. A museum complex on the seaward edge of the peninsula, with stretches of the medieval fortifications you can walk beside.
- The Ethnographic Museum. Housed in one of the old houses; it shows how the town lived and dressed.
- The churches. The Church of the Holy Mother of God, St George, Sts Cyril and Methodius and the small chapel of St Zosim.
- The harbour. Fishing boats in front, the islands of St Kirik and St Ivan behind. This is the view the Greek sailors had, more or less.
Opening hours change with the season, so check before you go, especially outside July and August.
Staying nearby
Our Sozopol apartments are in the Santa Marina holiday village, about 2 km from the old town: close enough to go in for an early walk and be back for breakfast on the balcony. If you plan to photograph the town, we have put together a guide to the best photo spots and the hours that suit them. For dates and prices, see the availability page or write to us.