Pomorie Old Town

Worth a detour

Pomorie occupies a narrow rocky peninsula running three and a half kilometres out into the bay, with the sea on three sides and a hypersaline lagoon behind it. That geography has made it a salt town since antiquity and a mud-cure town for a century, and it is one of the very few places on this coast that does not close in October. The old quarter is small; the lake, the salt pans and the tomb are the reasons to stay.

Story

Background

The Greeks founded Anchialos here in the fourth century BC and the town was destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly — by Goths, by Avars, by fire. Grain, wine, fish and timber made its living until salt overtook them, and salt has been made in the lagoon by the same slow evaporation method for more than two thousand years.

The old town is a reserve of ten Revival houses at the seaward end of the peninsula, in the Black Sea style: houses set on the line of narrow cobbled streets, timber oriels carried on consoles, balconies with pierced railings, white chimneys. It is a fraction of the size of Sozopol's old quarter and it is not the reason to come. Two churches stand among them, the Nativity of the Mother of God and the Transfiguration.

What Pomorie has instead is the cure. The lagoon yields lye and a fine estuarine mud that has been used medically for a century; the town calls itself the country's balneological capital and was formally recognised as such in 2013, and its sanatorium and spa hotels keep it open all winter. The beach is fine sand and runs a little over four kilometres. The rest of the list is short and good: the salt museum, the visitor centre on the lake, the Thracian domed tomb west of town, the monastery of St George, and a fisheries museum in the old water tower. A five-object combined museum ticket costs about €10.