Plovdiv

The building in the photo above was constructed around 125 years ago on top of one of Plovdiv’s seven hills. Sixty years ago there was a small quake and a large landslide. The landslide revealed some ruins and the subsequent excavations exposed a relatively intact theatre – the ancient Theatre of Phillipopolis. The theatre that had been built on the side of the hill by Phillip II of Macedon, (not Clive Berghofer) but its exact location had been lost until the soil slipped for the theatre’s second unveiling. The site is now being used again as a theatre for outdoor performances. For the folks living on top of the hill? They lost all their neighbors, but, hey, they got a nice theatre.

Bulgaria keeps accidentally revealing secrets like that. The metro system in Sophia took four times longer than expected to complete because the engineers kept coming across archeological sites that had to be preserved. Their Russian-made carriages arrived on time, but had to sit in storage for another six years whilst all the underground routes were altered and the acheological finds were cataloged and restored.

The city of Plovdiv itself is very old. (It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth. It existed the same time as Troy – Damascus and Jerusalum are older but Plovdiv makes the top five-oldest-cities-on-earth list) It was originally a Thracian settlement but has been invaded by Persians, Greeks, Celts, Romans , Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Slavs, the Rus, Crusaders, and Turks. In 1885 Plovdiv joined Bulgaria, but even since then has been invaded by the Nazis, the Russians and by German and Chinese tourists. Each wave caused its own destructions, each wave left new pieces of the Plovdiv jigsaw.

The oldest ruin in Rosewood was my uncle Albert – though even with modern science he could never have been restored like parts of Plovdiv have been. We did have one Greek family, a Ceylonese Anglican minister and a pile of Germans – invaders of sorts. Like the Thracians in Plovdiv, the original inhabitants of my home town were attacked, scattered and then disappeared. As interesting as Rosewood is however, I think Plovdiv my just pip it as a place for amateur historians like myself to explore. If only Rosewood had taken better care of Uncle Albert…….

A 3rd century Roman road beside a 21st century metro system!