Antheia

Worth a detour

Antheia was one of the small Greek settlements strung along Burgas Bay in the orbit of Apollonia, and it is listed in this guide for completeness rather than for the visit. There is nothing excavated, nothing presented and nothing signed. If you are walking this part of the shore, you are walking over it; that is the whole of what can honestly be promised.

Story

Background

The Milesian colony at Apollonia did not sit alone. The bay carried a scatter of smaller settlements and anchorages serving the same trade — timber and copper out of Strandzha, grain from the Thracian plain, salt from the northern shore — and their names come down through ancient geographers rather than through excavation. Antheia is one of those names.

What that means on the ground is a coastal site identified by scholars and never dug. The Sozopol municipality's territory holds dozens of such places: the antique complex on Cape Akra, the early Byzantine church in the Akladi dunes, the Neolithic settlement at Akladi Chairi, the Hrisosotira fortress, the Thracian sites on Medni Rid. A handful are fenced. Most are grass.

The useful thing a visitor can do with this is adjust expectations about the whole coast. The archaeology of Burgas Bay is exceptionally rich and almost entirely unpresented, and the material that has been dug up is in two museums, at Burgas and Sozopol. Go to those, and then walk the shore knowing what is under it. If you want ruins you can stand in, the options are the southern wall at Sozopol, the Foros tower at Kraymorie, Deultum at Debelt and Rusokastro — and, in a different league, Nesebar.