Statuya na ribarya

Worth a detour

A modern statue at the entrance to the old town: a fisherman ten metres high holding a cross in one hand and a dove in the other, meant as a new Noah whose dove found land on the Nesebar shore. It is five minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the thing the town has chosen as its symbol alongside the windmill and the harbour.

Story

Background

The statue went up in 2006 and the municipality lists it among the city symbols, with the port, the sea station, the old lighthouse tower and the fishing harbour. The imagery is straightforward: the ark, the flood, the dove that comes back with evidence of land, and a Black Sea fishing town casting itself as the place the bird found.

Whether it works as sculpture is a matter of taste, and plenty of people in Nesebar think it does not. What it does do is mark the point where the new town ends and the peninsula begins, which is genuinely useful on a first visit: the windmill is a few dozen metres one way and the Byzantine gate the same distance the other, and from the base of the statue you can see how narrow the isthmus actually is.

There is a practical reason to stop here too. This is roughly where the car parks are and where driving into the old town stops being possible: the historic streets are closed to vehicles through the summer and only pass-holders get in, with fines starting around €50. Leave the car, take the photograph, and walk the last three hundred metres.