Primorsko

Worth a detour

Primorsko has two of the largest beaches on the southern coast, one on each side of its headland, with the Ropotamo reserve immediately to the north and the Stamopolu marsh behind the north beach. It is a plain, crowded, inexpensive resort with nothing old in it, and it works: the water is shallow, the sand is deep and the sunbed prices are among the lowest on the coast.

Story

Background

The village was founded in 1879 and called Kyopryu, the bridge; it took the name Primorsko in 1934 and got its harbour in 1939. What made it was the International Youth Centre, opened in 1955, which brought young people here from across the eastern bloc for three decades and left the town with a scale of accommodation no fishing village would otherwise have. It was designated a national sea resort in 1962 and became a town in 1981.

The beaches are the substance. The north beach runs up towards the Stamopolu lagoon and the protected dune field between the town and the Perla locality — twenty-four hectares of dune, some ridges up to nineteen metres, with more than eighty plant species, fourteen of them in the Red Book. Walking there is allowed, unlike in the reserve; driving, camping and building are not. The south beach, sometimes called Devil's Bay, is the larger and the better for swimming.

At the northern edge of the town, in the Perla locality, stands what is officially described as the privatised base of a former state residence, with no planning status and no established property boundaries. Various stories attach to it, none of them documented, and this guide repeats none. The town's small history museum keeps normal hours in summer, and Beglik Tash is three kilometres away.