40 Interesting Facts About Bulgaria, Fact-Checked

Bulgaria pays in euros, holds the oldest worked gold on earth and sits under the highest peak in the Balkans, and the 40 facts below are the ones that hold up when you check them. The single most important change is recent: Bulgaria joined the euro on 1 January 2026, so every guide still telling you to bring leva is out of date.

Each fact is numbered, states its claim in the heading and carries the figure, date or source underneath. Where the version circulating online turned out to be wrong or has since expired, this page gives the corrected one.

Facts about the country and how it works

Eight facts cover the state of play in Bulgaria, starting with the one that changes what goes in your wallet.

1. Bulgaria pays in euros

Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 and became the 21st member of the eurozone. The lev and the euro both circulated as cash through January 2026, and since 1 February 2026 the euro has been the only legal currency, ending 146 years of the lev.

The conversion was locked at the long-standing peg of 1.95583 leva to the euro, so prices did not move with the switch. Shops were required to show both currencies from 8 August 2025 to 8 August 2026, which is why older price tags carry two numbers. Bulgarian euro coins carry the Madara Rider along with Saint Ivan Rilski and Paisius of Hilendar, making Bulgaria the first Orthodox country to put a Christian figure on its euro coinage.

2. Bulgaria has kept its name since 681

Bulgaria is the only country in Europe that has not changed its name since it was founded, in 681. Byzantium recognised the Bulgarian state in that year, and the name has survived two empires, five centuries of Ottoman rule, a principality, a kingdom, a people’s republic and a modern parliamentary democracy.

The state has changed shape repeatedly and the name on it has not. Our Bulgaria hub collects the cities, regions and routes that make up the modern version.

3. Bulgaria is one of the fastest-shrinking countries in the world

Bulgaria’s population stands at roughly 6.4 million and falls by close to 1% a year, driven by low birth rates and emigration. The country has lost around 2 million people since 1989, which is nearly a quarter of its population in a single generation.

The effect is most visible in the villages. Whole hamlets in the Rhodopes and the northwest are down to a handful of permanent residents, which is why so many of the restored villages in this guide are now weekend places rather than working ones.

4. Cyrillic is the European Union’s third alphabet because of Bulgaria

Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union on 1 January 2007, when Bulgaria joined, after Latin and Greek. Bulgarian is the only EU language written in Cyrillic, and it was the first Slavic language written in the script.

The alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire, at the Preslav Literary School, from the Glagolitic script created by Saints Cyril and Methodius. Bulgaria marks it on 24 May, a public holiday for the alphabet and for Bulgarian education and culture.

5. Bulgarians shake their heads for yes

A Bulgarian shaking their head from side to side is agreeing with you, and a Bulgarian nodding is saying no. The gesture is genuinely inverted rather than merely ambiguous, and it survives in shops, on buses and in conversation with people who otherwise speak fluent English.

The confusion runs both ways. Younger Bulgarians working with tourists often switch to the international version, which produces the worst outcome of all, with two people each using the other’s system. Ask out loud when it matters.

6. Bulgaria has 10 UNESCO World Heritage Sites

UNESCO lists ten World Heritage Sites in Bulgaria, seven cultural and three natural. The first four went on the list in 1979: the Boyana Church, the Madara Rider, the rock-hewn churches of Ivanovo and the Thracian tomb of Kazanlak.

The others are the Rila Monastery, the old town of Nesebar, the Thracian tomb of Sveshtari, the Srebarna nature reserve, Pirin National Park, and the Bulgarian share of the beech forest listing shared with 17 other countries. A further 16 Bulgarian sites sit on the tentative list.

7. The highest peak in the Balkans is Bulgarian

Musala, in the Rila mountains, rises to 2,925 m (9,598 ft) and is the highest point not only in Bulgaria but in the entire Balkan Peninsula. It is also the coldest place in the country, averaging about -2.5°C (27.5°F) across the year, with snow lying for most of it.

Getting up it is easier than the numbers suggest. A gondola from Borovets does most of the climbing, and the walk from the top station is a long day rather than a technical one. Three of Bulgaria’s main rivers, the Iskar, the Maritsa and the Mesta, rise near the summit.

8. A third of Bulgaria is forest

Forests cover roughly a third of Bulgarian territory, which is high for a European country of its size and the reason bears, wolves and jackals are still resident. The Black Sea forms the eastern border and the Danube most of the northern one, with the Balkan range running east to west across the middle and the Rhodopes along the southern edge.

That geography is why Bulgaria has both a beach season and a ski season, and why crossing the country north to south takes longer than the map suggests.

Facts about Bulgarian food and drink

Six facts cover what Bulgaria eats and drinks, including one dish that won a Europe-wide vote.

9. Yogurt is named after a Bulgarian bacterium

The bacterium that makes Bulgarian yogurt is called Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, identified in 1905 by the Bulgarian doctor Stamen Grigorov, who was studying in Geneva at the time. It is named after the country because that is where he found it.

Bulgarians call the result kiselo mlyako, sour milk, and eat it as a food rather than a dessert: on its own, in tarator soup with cucumber and dill, or thinned into ayran. The Russian biologist Ilya Mechnikov linked it to Bulgarian longevity in the early 1900s, which is where the reputation comes from.

10. Shopska salad won a Europe-wide vote

Shopska salad won “A Taste of Europe”, an online contest run by the European Parliament, in May 2014, taking more votes than any other national recipe. It is tomato, cucumber, onion and roasted pepper under a heavy grating of white sirene cheese.

The colours are the point: white, green and red, the Bulgarian flag on a plate. Our guide to Bulgarian salad and the rest of the country’s cooking covers what else to order alongside it.

11. Rakia is the national drink and it is not a digestif

Rakia is a fruit brandy distilled from grapes, plums, apricots or pears, and Bulgarians drink it at the start of a meal rather than the end, alongside a shopska salad. Home distilling is legal within limits and widespread, so the finest rakia you are offered will usually not have a label.

Strength runs from around 40% upwards. Treat a homemade bottle with more caution than a shop-bought one.

12. Kozunak is the bread that marks Easter

Kozunak is a braided sweet bread eaten at Easter, enriched with eggs and butter and often studded with raisins or filled with lokum. It is close to Romanian cozonac and Italian panettone in family, and it appears in bakeries for a few weeks a year.

Easter in Bulgaria follows the Orthodox calendar, so it usually falls later than the Western one. Red-dyed eggs and egg-tapping contests come with it.

13. Bulgarian cooking sits between Greek and Turkish

Bulgarian food shares most of its vocabulary with Greek and Turkish cooking: cucumber and tomato salads, filo pastries, grilled meat, yogurt and stuffed vegetables. Five centuries of Ottoman rule and a shared Balkan larder account for it.

The distinctly Bulgarian parts are sirene, the brined white cheese in almost everything, banitsa, the coiled filo pastry eaten for breakfast, and lyutenitsa, a thick pepper and tomato relish made in bulk every autumn.

14. Bulgaria was one of the world’s biggest wine exporters in the 1980s

Bulgaria ranked among the largest wine exporters in the world during the 1980s, shipping vast quantities of cabernet and merlot into Britain and the Soviet bloc. The industry collapsed with the state farms after 1989 and land restitution broke up the vineyards.

What replaced it is smaller and better. Boutique wineries around Melnik, the Thracian Valley and the Danube plain now work with local grapes such as mavrud, rubin and broad-leaved melnik, which are worth ordering ahead of the international varieties.

Facts about Bulgarian traditions and festivals

Eight facts cover the Bulgarian calendar, two of them carrying a UNESCO listing of their own.

15. Everyone wears a red and white thread on 1 March

On 1 March Bulgarians give each other martenitsi, twisted red and white threads worn on the wrist or pinned to a coat, to mark Baba Marta, Grandmother March. You keep it on until you see a stork, a swallow or a blossoming tree, then tie it to a branch.

UNESCO inscribed the practice on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017, in a shared listing with North Macedonia, Moldova and Romania. If you are in Bulgaria on 1 March, expect to be given one within the hour.

16. Barefoot fire dancing is a UNESCO-listed rite

Nestinarstvo, in which dancers cross a bed of glowing embers barefoot carrying icons, is a genuine surviving rite rather than a show. UNESCO inscribed it in 2009 as the climax of the annual Panagyr held on the feast days of Saints Constantine and Helena, on 3 and 4 June, in the village of Bulgari in the Strandzha mountains.

Versions are staged for tourists on the Black Sea coast. The one at Bulgari is the ritual the listing describes.

17. Name days matter more than birthdays

Bulgarians celebrate the feast day of the saint they are named after, and for many people the name day outranks the birthday. The person with the name does the inviting and the hosting, so guests can turn up without notice and be fed.

Some name days are enormous. Saint George’s Day on 6 May covers every Georgi and Gergana in the country and doubles as the army’s day, and Saint John’s on 7 January does the same for the Ivans.

18. Men dive into freezing rivers for a wooden cross

On Yordanovden, 6 January, a priest throws a cross into a river, lake or sea, and men jump in after it. Whoever surfaces with the cross is said to be healthy and lucky for the year.

At Kalofer the same day brings a men’s horo danced in the icy Tundzha, in water and air both well below comfortable. Both customs run every year regardless of the temperature.

19. The national instrument is a bagpipe

The gaida, a bagpipe made from a goat or sheep skin, is Bulgaria’s national instrument. The Rhodope version, the kaba gaida, is the large low-pitched one, and it is what carries the drone under most Bulgarian folk singing.

Bulgarian folk music also runs on asymmetric time signatures that western ears read as limping: 7/8, 9/8 and 11/8 are ordinary dance rhythms here.

20. Kazanlak crowns a Rose Queen every June

The Rose Festival in Kazanlak runs in the first week of June and has done for more than a century, with the 123rd edition held from 5 to 7 June 2026. It opens with the crowning of a Rose Queen, then spreads into rose-picking rituals in the villages around the town, street processions, folk concerts and wine tastings.

Picking starts at dawn, because the oil content of the petals falls once the sun is up. Visitors are welcome to join the picking, which is the part worth getting up for.

21. Bulgaria runs on rose and lavender oil

The Rose Valley around Kazanlak is one of the world’s main sources of rose oil, and Bulgaria produces roughly two tonnes of it a year. It takes about 3,500 kg of hand-picked petals to make a single kilogram of oil, which explains the price of the small vials sold everywhere in the country.

Bulgaria is also the world’s largest producer of lavender oil, which has quietly overtaken roses in planted area. Both end up in the perfume industry rather than in Bulgarian bathrooms.

22. A Bulgarian folk song is leaving the solar system

“Izlel e Delyu Haydutin”, sung by Valya Balkanska to a kaba gaida accompaniment, was included on the Voyager Golden Record and launched with Voyager 1 in 1977. The record carries sounds and music chosen to represent humanity, and the Bulgarian entry is on it alongside Bach, Chuck Berry and Javanese gamelan.

Both Voyager probes are now in interstellar space. Balkanska, born in the Rhodope village of Arda, is still the most widely travelled Bulgarian singer by a considerable margin.

Facts about Bulgarian history and archaeology

Seven facts cover what has been dug up in Bulgaria and what happened on top of it, in rough chronological order.

23. The oldest worked gold in the world came out of Varna

The Varna Necropolis, found by accident in October 1972 by an excavator driver, contained gold worked between 4600 and 4200 BC, the oldest processed gold treasure known anywhere. Around 3,000 gold objects weighing roughly 6 kg came out of the site.

One burial, Grave 43, held more gold than had been found in the whole rest of the world for that period, including Mesopotamia and Egypt. The finds are on show at the Varna Archaeological Museum, and our guide to Varna covers the rest of the city.

24. Bulgaria is covered in Thracian burial mounds

Around 15,000 Thracian tombs and burial mounds have been recorded across Bulgaria, and roughly a tenth of them lie in the Valley of the Thracian Kings near Kazanlak. Most are unexcavated, and they read as low grassy humps in ploughed fields until you know what you are looking at.

Two of them are UNESCO sites: the Kazanlak tomb, with its 4th-century BC murals, and the Sveshtari tomb, with its ten stone caryatids. The Kazanlak original is closed to visitors and a full-size replica stands next to it.

25. Orpheus was a Thracian

The Orpheus of Greek myth was described by the Greeks themselves as a Thracian, from the mountains of what is now southern Bulgaria. The Rhodopes are named in the story, and Bulgarian tourism has attached his name to caves, peaks and festivals throughout the range.

He is a mythological figure rather than a historical one. What is historical is that the Thracians were there, and that Greek writers treated their music as older and stranger than their own.

26. A monk carved 12 years of Bible scenes into one cross and went blind

Rafail’s Cross at the Rila Monastery is a single piece of linden wood carved with more than a hundred biblical scenes and hundreds of miniature figures, some no bigger than a grain of rice. The monk Rafail worked on it with fine burins and a magnifying lens for about twelve years and finished it in 1802, by which time he had lost his sight.

Sources disagree on the exact counts, giving anything from 104 to 140 scenes and 650 to 1,500 figures. The cross is in the monastery museum, and the monastery itself is on the UNESCO list and an easy day trip from Sofia.

27. Bulgaria saved its own Jews and handed over others

Bulgaria did not deport its roughly 48,000 Jewish citizens to the death camps, after protests by parliamentarians, Orthodox clergy and ordinary Bulgarians stopped the trains in March 1943. It is one of the few countries in Nazi-allied Europe where that happened.

The second half of the story is usually left out, and should not be. Bulgarian authorities rounded up and handed over 11,343 Jews from the territories Bulgaria occupied in Aegean Thrace, Vardar Macedonia and Pirot, almost none of whom survived. Both facts are true at once.

28. The oldest building in Sofia is a Roman rotunda

The Church of St George in Sofia is a red-brick rotunda built by the Romans in the 4th century, and it is the oldest building in the city. It stands in a courtyard behind the presidency, several metres below modern street level, surrounded by the remains of Roman Serdica.

Inside are five layers of frescoes, the earliest from the 10th century, painted over each other as the building moved between church and mosque. It is still an active church.

29. A stone bridge from 1470 still carries traffic

The Kadin Bridge at Nevestino, roughly 100 m (328 ft) long on five arches, was built in 1469 and 1470 under Ottoman rule and still spans the Struma. An inscribed plate on the eastern railing records the date.

The name means “the lady’s bridge”, and local legend attaches the usual Balkan story of a woman walled into the foundations to make the structure hold. The bridge is a short detour off the road south from Sofia to the Greek border.

Facts about Bulgarian places

Five facts cover the places in Bulgaria that people go out of their way for, and most of them need a car.

30. The Belogradchik Rocks each have a name

The Belogradchik Rocks in the northwest are a run of red sandstone and conglomerate formations up to 200 m (656 ft) high, and local tradition gives each one a name and a story: the Schoolgirl, the Horseman, the Madonna, the Bear, Adam and Eve.

An Ottoman-era fortress is built directly into them, using the rock faces as walls. Belogradchik is about three hours from Sofia by road and awkward without a car, which is why it stays quiet.

31. There is a stone wedding party in the Rhodopes

The Stone Wedding near Zimzelen in the eastern Rhodopes is a field of eroded pink, brown and red rock pillars, which local legend reads as a wedding party turned to stone. The two largest pillars are the bride and the groom and the rest are the guests.

The formations are volcanic tuff carved by wind and water. The colours are strongest in low sun, so early or late is worth planning for.

32. A whole village was preserved by being too remote to modernise

Kovachevitsa, in the Pirin foothills, is a village of tall stone and timber houses from the Bulgarian Revival period, built without nails and roofed in slate, on cobbled streets too steep for cars. It survived intact because it was too isolated to be worth rebuilding.

It is now a protected architectural reserve and a frequent film location, with a handful of guesthouses. The road in is narrow and the last stretch is steep.

33. Bansko is a medieval town with a ski lift attached

Bansko, at the foot of the Pirin mountains, is Bulgaria’s main ski resort and the reason many first-time visitors come in winter. Underneath the resort is an old town of stone Revival houses, a walled 19th-century church and mehanas serving Pirin food.

The lift system runs up into Pirin National Park, a UNESCO site, and the season usually runs from December to April. Summer turns the same lifts over to hikers.

34. Sofia has a mountain inside the city limits

Vitosha rises to 2,290 m (7,513 ft) directly above Sofia, and part of the massif lies within the city boundary. A bus from a metro station reaches the trailheads in well under an hour, and the mountain is visible from most of the city.

Vitosha Nature Park was declared in 1934 and is the oldest national park in the Balkans. The stone rivers, long tongues of boulders running down the slopes, are the feature that catches people out on the way up.

Facts about Bulgarians who made a mark

Six facts cover Bulgarians who ended up in the record books, in laboratories and, in one case, in a virtual farm.

35. A Bulgarian held the high jump world record for 37 years

Stefka Kostadinova, from Plovdiv, jumped 2.09 m at the 1987 World Championships in Rome and the record stood until Yaroslava Mahuchikh broke it in July 2024, a span of 37 years. Kostadinova cleared 2.00 m 197 times in her career and won Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996.

She set seven world records in all, three outdoors and four indoors, and led the Bulgarian Olympic Committee from 2005 to 2025. Her home city has its own guide to Plovdiv.

36. The first electronic digital computer was built by a Bulgarian’s son

John Vincent Atanasoff, son of the Bulgarian immigrant Ivan Atanasov, built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State between 1937 and 1942, the first automatic electronic digital computer. A 1973 court ruling invalidated the ENIAC patent and credited him with the underlying invention.

He visited Bulgaria in 1970 and was awarded the country’s Order of Cyril and Methodius. Bulgaria has claimed him energetically ever since.

37. So was the first digital wristwatch

Peter Petroff, a Bulgarian-born engineer who defected in the 1950s, designed the first digital wristwatch, sold as the Pulsar from 1972. He also worked on early heart-rate monitors and on weather instruments for NASA.

The Pulsar’s red LED display had to be switched on with a button, because leaving it lit would have flattened the battery in a day. That is why 1970s film characters press their watches before reading them.

38. A Bulgarian actor turned up in Game of Thrones

Zahary Baharov, one of Bulgaria’s better-known screen actors, played the wildling Loboda in Game of Thrones. He has worked mainly in Bulgarian film and theatre, with occasional international roles.

Bulgaria’s connection to the series runs deeper than one part. Nu Boyana Film Studios outside Sofia has hosted a long list of international productions, which is why so many low-budget action films have a Bulgarian crew list.

39. Dan Kolov was a wrestler with a national legend attached

Dan Kolov, born Doncho Kolev Danev in 1892, was a Bulgarian wrestler who fought professionally in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s and was famous enough at home to become a national figure. The tally of 1,500 wins and two defeats repeated everywhere comes from that legend rather than from records, and professional wrestling of the period was not a straightforward sport.

What is documented is that he was a genuine strongman with an enormous following, and that his line “I feel strong because I am Bulgarian” is still quoted.

40. A councillor was sacked for playing Farmville in meetings

Dimitar Kerin, a Plovdiv city councillor, was dismissed in 2010 after being caught playing Farmville during council sessions. The council voted him out with the observation that he would now have more time for his virtual farm.

He was not the only one playing, by his own account, only the one who had reached a higher level. It remains the most widely reported thing a Bulgarian local councillor has ever done.

Planning a trip around these facts

Bulgaria splits into two kinds of trip, and the facts above fall unevenly between them. Sofia, Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo, Nesebar and the Black Sea coast are all reachable by train or bus. The Belogradchik Rocks, the Stone Wedding, Kovachevitsa and the Kadin Bridge are not, in any practical sense.

Sofia Airport takes flights from most of Europe and connects onwards to the US through the major hubs, and fares swing widely by season and carrier, so it pays to compare flights to Sofia before fixing dates. Prices peak in the ski weeks and in August on the coast.

For anything in the Rhodopes, the northwest or the Pirin villages, book a car. Distances look small and drive slowly, because the mountain roads switchback and the last few kilometres to places like Kovachevitsa are steep and narrow. Compare car hire rates for a Sofia or Plovdiv pick-up as soon as your dates are set, since Bulgarian fleets are small and sell out in June and July.

Guided day trips cover the sights that are hard to reach and harder to interpret, particularly Rila Monastery, the Thracian tombs around Kazanlak and the Belogradchik fortress.

Accommodation is where Bulgaria still surprises visitors from western Europe on price, particularly outside Sofia and the coast in August. Compare hotels across Bulgaria once your dates are set, and note that prices are now quoted in euros rather than leva.

Bulgaria FAQ

What currency does Bulgaria use?

Bulgaria uses the euro. The country joined the eurozone on 1 January 2026, the lev stopped being legal tender on 1 February 2026, and the conversion was fixed at 1.95583 leva to the euro. Cards are accepted almost everywhere in cities and resorts, though small village shops, mountain huts and some taxis still prefer cash. Any guide telling you to change money into leva was written before 2026.

What language do they speak in Bulgaria?

Bulgarian is the official language, written in Cyrillic, and it is the only EU official language that uses that alphabet. Turkish and Romani are the largest minority languages. English is widely spoken by younger people in Sofia, Plovdiv and the resorts, and less so in villages, where Russian or German is often the second language instead. Learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet takes an afternoon and pays for itself on the first bus timetable.

What is Bulgaria known for?

Bulgaria is known for yogurt, rose oil, Thracian gold, Orthodox monasteries and cheap skiing. The Rose Valley around Kazanlak supplies a large share of the world’s rose oil, the Varna necropolis holds the oldest worked gold on earth, Rila Monastery is the country’s most-visited building, and Bansko and Borovets sell some of the lowest lift-pass prices in Europe. Our guide to Bulgarian food covers the eating side of that list.

When is the best time to visit Bulgaria?

May, June and September are the best months to visit Bulgaria for everything except skiing. The Rose Festival falls in the first week of June, the mountains are walkable from late May, and September gives warm sea without the August crowds on the coast. Ski season in Bansko and Borovets runs roughly December to April. July and August are hot inland and busy on the Black Sea.

Do you need a car in Bulgaria?

You need a car for the mountains and the villages, and not for the cities. Sofia, Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo, Varna and Burgas are linked by trains and frequent buses, and Sofia has a metro. The Rhodope villages, the Belogradchik Rocks and most of the Thracian sites have no useful public transport at all, so a trip built around those needs a hire car or an organised tour.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below come from re-checking every fact on this page against its source in 2026, and each one changes what a visitor should do rather than what they know.

1. Stop converting into leva. Bulgaria has used the euro since 1 January 2026 and the lev stopped being legal tender on 1 February 2026, at a fixed 1.95583 to the euro. Older guidebooks, currency apps and blog posts still tell travellers to bring leva or to expect euros to be refused, and both are now wrong.
2. Go to Kazanlak in the first week of June, and get up at dawn. The Rose Festival ran 5 to 7 June in 2026 and keeps to the first week, but the rose picking in the villages starts at first light because the oil in the petals drops once the sun hits them. The parade is the afternoon; the picking is the reason to come.
3. Check which fire dance you are watching. The UNESCO-listed nestinarstvo takes place on 3 and 4 June at the village of Bulgari in the Strandzha mountains, as part of the Panagyr of Saints Constantine and Helena. What the Black Sea resorts sell under the same name in July is a staged version.
4. The Kazanlak tomb you can enter is a replica. The original 4th-century BC Thracian tomb is sealed to protect its murals, and visitors are shown a full-size copy built beside it. This is the correct way to see it, but it is worth knowing before you arrive expecting the real chamber.
5. Learn the head gesture before you need it. A side-to-side shake means yes and a nod means no, and Bulgarians dealing with tourists sometimes switch to the international version, which makes it worse. When it matters, whether the bus stops here or the kitchen is still open, ask for a spoken answer.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team has covered Bulgaria for independent travellers city by city, from Sofia and Plovdiv to Varna and Veliko Tarnovo. This page tracks the food, festivals, monasteries and mountain villages worth planning a trip around, and it is updated when prices, currencies, festival dates and opening rules change. Our Bulgaria destinations index collects the rest.