Deultum Museum Complex

Worth a detour

Roman Bulgaria is mostly inland; this is the coastal exception. Deultum was founded in 69 AD by Vespasian as a colony for veterans of the Eighth Augustan Legion, given the land between the Burgas and Mandra lakes, and it grew into a city of some twenty-five hectares with baths, a nymphaeum, an asclepion, drains and its own coinage. It is eighteen kilometres from Burgas and almost nobody goes.

Story

Background

The name is Thracian and is usually translated as the place between two marshes, which describes the site exactly. The colony was formally Colonia Flavia Pacis Deultensium, and its settlers were legionaries who had served in the suppression of the Judaean revolt and the civil war that put Vespasian on the throne. Under the Severan dynasty, at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, the city covered more than two hundred and fifty decares, laid out on the cardinal points, with temples of Asclepius and Cybele in the centre and a temple of the imperial cult built under Septimius Severus. For about fifty years it struck its own bronze coinage, and the images on those coins are a large part of what is known about how it looked.

What has been excavated and can be seen: Roman baths, the asclepion, streets with their drainage, a nymphaeum, a latrine, cemeteries on three sides, and a substantial early Byzantine defensive system including a tower on the north wall. Work has been going on since the 1980s and continues. In the ninth century Debelt passed to the First Bulgarian Kingdom and the Erkesia border rampart begins here.

It was declared a national archaeological reserve in 1988. Practically, it is difficult: no hours and no price are published anywhere, the official website is unfinished and its own navigation links return errors, and the only reliable contact is a telephone number. Ring first. The reward is a Roman city with no coach park.