Rocks of Belogradchik

A great place to spend a couple of hours. The rocks are unique and the way that they have been used to build a fort around them and utilise the natural defensive nature of the rocks is impressive.
Getting there is another matter, I was lucky enough to be staying with my friend in Serbia and we drove there but it is a fair way off the beaten track through miles of sparsely populated farmlands.
Once there, the trip was certainly worth it, I've not visited anywhere that is similar before or since.
There are facilities in the local town including a nice hotel and places to eat but nothing else much to see.

Before the conclusion of my second 3-month stay in Golden Sands, Bulgaria (and on the occasion of a Robert Wilson production of The Tempest by Shakespeare at the National Theater in Sofia), I decided to visit the 3 TWHSs in the north western corner of Bulgaria in mid-November 2021.

In fact, back in 2010, one year before the nomination of this site, I tried to get to Belogradchik but failed. My train from Sofia stopped at the nearest train station Oreshets, but with no bus or taxi in sight I didn't know how to move from the station to Belogradchik. So I got back on train and headed to Vidin and onto Felix Romuliana in Serbia.

This time I found one direct bus a day from Sofia's central bus station to Belogradchik. So it is not so difficult to get there. It departs at 16:30 and arrives at 20:00.

I explored the site in the following morning. The photos of the site that I had seen were stunning, and in actuality it was stunning!

This is due to the combination of the rocks and a fortress, and without either one of them it would not be so special. This shape of rocks is not so unusual in Europe, especially in Czechia (though geologically different). The fortress was originally built by the Romans in the 1st AD and later enlarged by Bulgarians and Turks, but the remaining fortress does not look so unusual. 

This site reminded …