After visiting the historical homes of Old Town Plovdiv, we had some museums to visit, as well as a climb to one of the Seven Hills of Plovdiv to see the huge statue we had seen from many different places in the city.
The Alyosha Monument is dedicated to the Soviet Army for liberating Bulgaria in 1944 from the Germany, and it is massive. We took the winding path all the way up to the top.
Right across from it, with much less fanfare (and not being very well kept) is the Monument to Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who led the Russian forces in the late 1800s and liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman Rule.
The Alyosha Monument is a great place to watch sunset and we were joined by some other tourists and locals, all enjoying the cooler evening air.
The sunset we saw from up here is at the top of this post and here is Jesse at the top, along with a picture of the Clock Tower which we visited on our first day.
The next morning we visited the Regional Archeological Museum, which has the grand Monument of Unification in the plaza next to it.
The Regional Archeological Museum has a lot of pottery and such from ancient times, but there were three things that were my favorites. The ancient coins, of which there were many:
The biggest ancient mosaic outside the Bishop’s Bascilla of Philipopolis (and what a cool design):
And the piece de resistance, the Panagyuristhe Gold Treasure, a luxurious table set consisting of nine gold vessels of different shapes. Made at the beginning of the 3rd century BC of 23 karat gold; they were found by three brothers in 1949.
It was quite an interesting museum and well worth a visit if nearby. We continued our walk and stopped by the mosque that was very near our hotel on the way back, the Dzhumaya Mosque. It was originally built in 1358, and had been restored in 2008.
It was quite nice inside.
In between visiting the historical homes of Old Town Plovdiv, we walked to the nearby City Art Gallery. Laid out on four floors, there is a lot of art to see, mostly paintings, and some are on narrow hallway corridors, where it was hard to get a good view. Each floor became more and more contemporary, and the top floor had art made in the last few years. There were also some paintings by the Master, Vladimir Dimitrov, which we have come to like the more we see.
Here are some of the contemporary art we liked:
And finally, the ultra modern:
It was definitely worth the stop and we were glad we did. That about wraps up our trip to Plovdiv. We had a great time, and finished our last night watching one last sunset from the roof of the hotel.
We had one more train to take, this time to the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, for our last stop on on Eastern European Summer Vacation, coming up next!
Phil Barrington's WayPastCool 