Veliko Turnovo - Infoguide

THE TOWN OF TURNOVGRAD - A SENSE OF ETERNITY

Seven thousand years of human history have been stored within the hills, embraced by the magnificent meanders of the Yantra River. In 4300 B.C. in the western part of the Veliko Turnovo of today there was a neolithic settlement, which had existed for more than 1000 years, comprising a territory of 4.5 hectares. The Trapezista Hill had been inhabited as early as the 3rd millennium B.C. The Tsarevets and the Trapezitsa Hills have entered the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. with a Thracian settlement on their slopes and on the banks along the bed of the Yantra River. During the period between the 5th and the 6th centuries on the hills of Tsarevets, Trapezitsa and Momina Krepost /Maidens Fortress/ there had been built the first fortified town. And in the 12th century its ruins on the Tsarevets Hill had become foundations of the medieval unassailable fortress. In 1185, when Turnovgrad was proclaimed for the capital of the Bulgarian state, the Byzantine chronicler Nikita Honiat had praised Tsarevets as "the most impregnable and the most beautiful town among all the towns along the Hemus". For more than 200 years it had been glorified in the European royal circles as "the third town after Rome and the second after Constantinople".

The town in the mirror of the river.