Plovdiv Ancient Theatre Trail

About this pack

A 6-day mid-range trip to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, taking in Roman Theatre of Philippopolis, Nebet Tepe hill, Dzhumaya Mosque and Old Town lanes.

Inside the Plovdiv Ancient Theatre Trail trip

Plovdiv Ancient Theatre Trail opens at the Roman Theatre of Philippopolis, ranked among the world's best-preserved ancient Roman theatres and set right in the centre of modern Plovdiv, on the site of the Roman-era city once known as Philippopolis. Built in the 1st century AD, probably during the reign of the emperor Domitian, the theatre takes the form of a semicircle 82 metres across, its horseshoe-shaped orchestra ringed by 28 concentric rows of marble seating divided into wedge-shaped sections by narrow radial stairways. A three-storey stage building, the scaenae frons, closes the south side with an Ionic marble colonnade below a Corinthian upper tier, and after a large section of the theatre was destroyed by fire or earthquake at the end of the 4th century, it lay buried until archaeologists rediscovered it in the late 1960s; restored using original architectural elements under the anastylosis technique, it now hosts plays, concerts and public events for up to 3,500 spectators and is considered one of Bulgaria's most significant conservation achievements.

From the theatre the route climbs to Nebet Tepe, one of the hills on which ancient Plovdiv was founded, with the earliest settlement here dated back to around 4000 BC. First settled by Thracians and later expanded under Philip II of Macedon and then the Roman Empire, the hill became the citadel of the town's acropolis, its name coming from the Turkish words for "guard" and "hill" after the garrison once thought to have been stationed here. Excavations have uncovered walls built from large, closely fitted syenite blocks without mortar, a Hellenistic-era quadrangular tower, and a 6th-century postern — a secret staircase tunnel built during the reign of Justinian and, according to some historians, once walked by the Apostle Paul — leading down toward the Maritsa river, alongside a large stone water reservoir from the same period.

The trail continues to the Dzhumaya Mosque, also known as the Friday Mosque, built in 1363–1364 on the site of the former Sveta Petka Tarnovska Cathedral Church following the Ottoman conquest of Plovdiv. The building seen today dates largely from the reign of Sultan Murad I in the 15th century, when the earlier structure was demolished and rebuilt; it holds nine domes over a prayer hall measuring 33 by 27 metres, its northeast corner marked by a single minaret, and its interior walls carry paintings dating from the late 18th to early 19th centuries. Still an active mosque today, it stands at the very heart of Plovdiv, a short walk from both Nebet Tepe and the Roman theatre.

The route closes among the cobbled lanes of Plovdiv's Old Town, an architectural and historical reserve spread across three of the city's hills — Nebet Tepe, Dzhambaz Tepe and Taksim Tepe — that has been on UNESCO's World Heritage tentative list since 2004. Layers of habitation from prehistoric times through antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Bulgarian National Revival sit side by side here, most visibly along Hisar Kapia, a medieval gate built in the 11th century AD over the foundations of an earlier Roman-era gate and one of three historic entrances to the acropolis of ancient Philippopolis. During the Ottoman period, Revival-era houses were built directly into the remains of the old stone walls around the gate, and it is this layering — Thracian hillfort, Roman gate, Ottoman-era townhouse — that gives the Old Town's lanes their particular texture, a fitting close to a route that has already carried the traveller from a working Roman theatre through a Thracian citadel and a 14th-century mosque.

• Roman theatre of Philippopolis — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Nebet Tepe — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Dzhumaya Mosque — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Old Town (Plovdiv) — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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