Madara (Archeological Preserve)

Worth a detour

The only rock relief of its kind in Europe, carved about twenty-three metres up a sheer limestone wall, with Greek inscriptions beside it that record the deeds of three early Bulgarian rulers. It is the oldest written trace of the Bulgarian state. Go up onto the plateau afterwards — most people photograph the rider and leave, and miss the better half.

Story

Background

A rider on horseback drives a spear into a lion; a dog runs behind him. That is the whole image, cut in shallow relief into a vertical cliff above the village of Madara at the beginning of the eighth century, when this place was a sanctuary of the first Bulgarian state. Nobody agrees on who the rider is meant to be.

The inscriptions matter as much as the carving. Cut in Greek around the relief, they name the khans Tervel, Kormisos and Omurtag and record treaties and campaigns across most of the eighth century — the earliest written record the Bulgarian state left of itself. Felix Kanitz brought the site to scholarly attention in 1872; UNESCO inscribed the relief in 1979. Only the rider and its rock face are actually inscribed: 1.2 hectares, a strip of cliff.

The reserve around it is the part people skip. Stone stairs climb to a plateau holding a fortress that was in use from antiquity until the fifteenth century, and a rock monastery that used more than 150 natural caves as cells and chapels. There is a Roman villa, a spring, and a cave that held a pagan sanctuary to the nymphs. Allow an hour and a half if you intend to go up; the plateau circuit is around six kilometres and there is no shade on it.