Wanderings: Nicopolis ad Istrum (*)

August 18, 2019

We took the early train from Sofia, Bulgaria through the iskar river Gorge to Gorna Orjahovitsa in Central Bulgaria. Two teenage girls came into our compartment about halfway there (1). Eventually they asked where we were from. "How did you hear about Bulgaria? Why did you come HERE?" They asked where I had been in Bulgaria. After I rattled off a list of some of the places, they exchanged some words in Bulgarian that seemed to mean that I had seen more of Bulgaria than they had.

We alighted and took a taxi north (2) to the ruins of Nicopolis ad Istrum, an ancient Roman city dating from the first century C.E. The city means Victory on the Istrum (Danube) (3) and reached its heyday in the early 200s.

There was a large marketplace that was for pedestrians only (4) and an Odeon where the city council met. The city slanted from southwest to northeast, with an extensive sewer system draining to the northeast. The city was supplied with water via a reservoir and aqueduct system. There are ongoing excavations exposing more of the city. An aerial photo at the site revealed an extensive street grid under the vegetation radiating out from the exposed central part of the city. The city was sacked by the Goths the 5th century and is now surrounded by farmland.

We had asked the taxi to wait for us (5) and he took the less-rutted road out towards the main road then into Veliko Tarnovo, the capital of the second Bulgarian empire. Poking about the Tsaravets Fortress, I was amused by the loud speakers warning to be careful of the Cliff of Death. The Fortess is set on a tight bend in the Yantra river that almost makes the high ground here into an island.

(*) The theme is this week's trip is Roman cities in Bulgaria. There is a book of the same name containing chapters written by archeologist describing various Roman cities and their remains in Bulgaria. Fortuitously, my school librarians discovered that one of the three copies in the U.S. was less than 10 miles from my office. The chapters varied widely in style (and translation quality). I had copies of the relevant individual chapters with me to read along the way, to regale my wife, and to try to find the artifacts mentioned.

(1) One of the girls had La Petite Prince (Bulgarian translation) and the other girl was quizzing here on a passage she apparently was supposed to memorize. It was late summer, and I surmize this was her high school summer reading.

(2) Down a very rutted road that sent the stuffed animal hanging from the taxi's mirror swirling about vigorously.

(3) Although the city is 30 miles from the Danube, it became an important crossroads and trading town.

(4) Archeologists can tell the area was a pedestrianized because there were steps leading to the Agora. I somehow thought pedestrianized shopping areas were an invention of the twentieth century.

(5) The ancient city is now in the middle of nowhere. The taxi driver had a coffee in the nearest village and returned in a hour (a) to pick us up.

(a) Which is probably less time than he have would have taken to drive back to Gorna Orjahovitsa and get another fare. We gave him a good tip, which is not common here in Bulgaria (i).

(i) Bulgaria is one of the few places in this part of the world where the taxis have meters which are actually used by the drivers.

Nicopolis ad Istrum