Kaliakra

Worth a detour

The cape is a blade of reddish rock pushing about two kilometres into the Black Sea with seventy-metre cliffs on both sides and a fortress wall drawn across the narrowest point. In the fourteenth century this was the seat of Dobrotitsa's despotate. Now it is a reserve, a road, a chapel and a very good walk. Late afternoon is when the rock actually turns red rather than merely warm.

Story

Background

People have used the headland since at least the fourth century BC, when the Thracian settlement of Tirizis stood on it. Its high point came in the 1300s under Dobrotitsa, who ruled this coast from here, minted his own coins and kept galleys below. The Ottomans took it in 1393 or 1394. What survives is foundations, cisterns and stretches of wall rather than standing buildings — the drama is entirely in the site.

A monument near the entrance marks the legend of the forty maidens who are said to have tied their hair together and walked into the sea rather than be taken. There is no documentary basis for it. It is a story the place grew, and it gets told at every stop on the cape.

The whole headland has been a nature and archaeological reserve since 1960 — some 687 hectares, including a strip of sea, with over four hundred plant species of which nearly fifty are rare or protected. It sits under the Via Pontica, so autumn brings raptors and storks over, and short-beaked common dolphins are regular below the cliffs. A chapel to St Nicholas was built out at the tip in 1993. Go late: the light after five does something to the iron in the rock that midday cannot.