Until the 1950s-1960s, Bulgaria was a rural country. The majority of Bulgarians lived in villages, as had their forefathers for centuries before. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation under Communism sucked the life from Bulgarian rural communities. The hardships of the transition to democracy and the free economy post 1989 worsened what many see as rural depopulation. Farms and houses were abandoned and the remaining inhabitants saw how basic amenities disappeared from their villages: from proper roads and public transport to the nearest towns and cities, to kindergartens, schools and healthcare facilities. Today, the liveliest places in many Bulgarian villages seem to be the graveyards.

During the Covid-19 pandemic and in its wake, thousands of urban Bulgarians became interested in moving back to villages, either permanently or temporarily. Living in your own house and tending your own garden far from the pollution of the big cities became so appealing that rural property rates went up significantly. This reverse migration did nothing to improve the infrastructure and standard of living in villages: the roads are still bad, public transport is still rare, the former schools are now being sold to investors who turn them into hotels and assisted living communities. In case of a healthcare emergency you are left to your own devices.

Still, the charm of Bulgarian villages is too strong to resist. Here is a list of 10 places that you should visit and enjoy – if not as a property owner, then as a short-term visitor.

Svezhen

What: Architectural reserve in the Sredna Gora mountain range

Few Bulgarians are aware of the beauty and serenity of Svezhen, an architectural reserve of 19th century houses scattered on the northern reaches of the Sredna Gora mountains. The village appeared under the Ottomans and quickly grew in significance thanks to its privileged status. The government exempted its inhabitants of some taxes and duties. In return, the Svezhen inhabitants had to guard the nearby passes from highwaymen. 

In the 19th century Svezhen blossomed. The villagers made good money in the sheep trade, and the village was granted a township status. It had one of the first schools in the Bulgarian lands, a new church was erected, and in the central square there were about 20 public houses – in a place with a population of 3,300. The well-to-do merchants and artisans lived in two-storey houses along the main street. 

Most of this disappeared in 1877, during the Russo-Turkish Wars when the Ottoman army and irregulars torched Svezhen to the ground and butchered many of its residents. 

Svezhen would never fully recover. More people left after the collectivisation of farmland under Communism. Today there are about 200 permanent residents of the village. 

A number of traditional houses do survive, and some of them are museums. Near the village is the supposed tomb of Hadzhi Dimitar, a Bulgarian freedom fighter who was slain by the Ottomans in 1868, as well as numerous, as yet unresearched ancient Thracian megaliths. One of them, the poetically named Dragon's Egg, is a spherical boulder.

Shiroka Laka

What: Traditional village deep in the Rhodope famed for its musicians

Spread along the course of a small river winding between the mountain slopes, Shiroka Laka is a patchwork of one and two-storey traditional houses with heavy stone-slab roofs, the greenery of tiny gardens peeping out among them.

Today fewer than 500 people live permanently in Shiroka Laka, but the houses, the mansions and the church stand as evidence of the times when the village was much livelier. Being one of the most prominent settlements in the area, inhabited by rich merchants and the owners of flocks of sheep, Shiroka Laka played a significant role in Bulgarian life in the 19th century.

In 1878-1879, the village was the centre of resistance organised by maverick revolutionary Captain Petko Voyvoda. Disagreeing with the clauses of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, which followed the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and left the Rhodope under Ottoman rule, the captain made Shiroka Laka and the surrounding area a sort of independent entity. The region joined Bulgaria some decades later, during the First Balkan War of 1912-1913.

Bozhentsi

What: A group of 19th century houses in the Stara Planina mountains

Huddled deep in the Stara Planina mountains, Bozhentsi is a cluster of Revival Period houses and mansions built by what was at the time a vibrant community of artisans and merchants. The village retained its old-world atmosphere after post-1944 urbanisation led to most of its younger inhabitants leaving for the cities.

Bozhentsi's legends are also intriguing, one claiming that the village was founded by one Bozhana, a noblewoman fleeing the Bulgarian medieval capital Tarnovo after the Ottomans sacked it, in 1393.

Bozhentsi is an architectural heritage site now, attracting a number of outsiders, which has resulted in the invasion of 4WDs and the lifestyle that goes with the Bulgarians who usually drive them. If you visit outside weekends and high summer, however, you will be more or less alone with Bozhentsi's stone-roofed houses.

Rayuvtsi and around

What: A handful of hamlets around Elena, in the Stara Planina

The environs of Elena, a picturesque traditional town in the Stara Planina mountain range, are scattered with tiny villages that are now mostly empty. What makes them so alluring is their well preserved old houses, the landscape of rolling hills, forests and tiny streams, and the local prosciutto, Elenski but, that is unique to Bulgaria.  

One of them is Sredni Kolibi, which translates as Middle Shacks. The village was founded in the 16th century, and experienced its best years in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when a church and a school were built there, along with a monument to locals who fell in the 1912-1918 wars. Today, most of the houses are empty, and the school was demolished after it had stood empty and abandoned for over a decade.

The nearby Yovkovtsi Dam, built in the 1970s and 1980s – which destroyed a couple of villages in the process – is good for angling. Nearby is also one of modern Bulgaria's peculiarities. On a hill by Rayuvtsi hamlet is a rapidly expanding compound of modern sculptures and megaliths that promote nationalistic messages. Erected recently by a local entrepreneur to promote his businesses and whip up "patriotic" sentiments, the "Bulgarian Stonehenge," as some local media were quick to dub it, is of course completely fake. The area, however, is one-of-a-kind.

Leshten

What: Traditional village in the Western Rhodope with outstanding vistas towards the Pirin

Leshten is tiny but impressive, its 200-year old crooked houses of timber and stone still resisting time and woodworm. The village was the home of poor stonemasons and builders who travelled through the Ottoman Empire, building houses, churches and bridges. For their families in Leshten, these men created more humble abodes.

Like elsewhere in Bulgaria, Leshten was practically abandoned during Communism. Its residents fled the hard terrain and the harsh mountain conditions to find better jobs and opportunities in the industrialised cities.

The village was saved from total destruction in the 1990s, when a couple from Sofia visited, fell in love with it, bought some houses, restored them carefully and started letting them to travellers and holidaymakers. With time, some visitors even started settling in Leshten.

Today, Leshten has become a victim of its own success: huge, pseudo traditional hotels surround its traditional core.

Bardarski Geran

What: Central European architecture in one of the drabbest parts of Northern Bulgaria

This village is not on any list of must-see places in Bulgaria, but the drive through one of the drabbest parts of the Danubian Plain is worth it, as Bardarski Geran appears to be straight out of a Central European fairy tale. Its ornate houses and its two Roman Catholic churches evoke the era of the long gone Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Bardarski Geran appeared after Bulgaria's liberation from the Ottomans. It was founded by Banat Bulgarians, the heirs of Catholic Bulgarians who had fled the brutal repression of the 1688 Chiprovtsi Uprising and settled in the Banat region, then divided between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. In 1893, the Banat Bulgarians in Bardarski Geran were joined by Saxon German settlers. Both communities had their own churches and customs, introducing to Bulgarian soil their preferred type of architecture, cuisine and culture. 

The Germans of Bardarski Geran are no more. They were forced to return to Germany in the final years of the Second World War, leaving behind their church, now a ghostly ruin that is recently being restored.

Varvara

What: Seaside village of peculiar rock formations and sights

There is hardly a more tranquil place to spend your summer vacation on the Bulgarian southern Black Sea coast than Varvara. 

The village lacks the disadvantages of its bigger and more popular brethren that claim to be seaside resorts: no crowds of partygoers from all over Europe, no white and blue-collar Bulgaria holidaymakers. Outside of peak summer season, the pavements are almost completely yours, and the sky is full of flocks of swallows and storks. Lodging and eating in Varvara is relatively cheap.

Varvara is so calm and affordable because its only beach is small and rocky. Your other option for swimming is to dive from the picturesque cliffs around. The most popular of these are the Dardanelite, named after the Dardanelles Strait, and the Mekite Skali, or the Soft Rocks. Before reaching them, you will pass by an iron tree rising from a windswept, grassy field. This is actually an abandoned movie prop, and has been there since the 1980s.

Varvara's own streetscape is pretty provincial and insignificant: a collection of low, dust covered houses from the 1970s and 1980s, small hotels from the 2000s, a new playground of the kind that appeared in the past few years all over Bulgaria. The church, which looks old, was built in the early 2000s.

Yasna Polyana

What: A village in the Strandzha full of wood sculptures and... storks

This village on the eastern slopes of the Strandzha is close enough to the Black Sea to serve as a base for a beach vacation. What makes it truly appealing, however, is that for a couple of years it was the playground of some of the greatest romantics in Bulgarian history: the Tolstoyists.

These young Bulgarians, living at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, were followers of Leo Tolstoy. The Russian author preached the benefits of a life lived close to nature, which inspired a number of followers.

In 1906 his Bulgarian fans founded a colony in the village of Alan Kayrak, in the Strandzha. To the bemusement of the locals, the Tolstoyists lived communally, sharing their labour and lives.

The colony lasted until 1908 but, as the time passed, the locals began to cherish the Tolstoyists. In 1934, when the Turkish name of the village was about to be replaced, they chose Yasna Polyana, after the Russian Yasnaya Polyana, where Leo Tolstoy had lived.

Curiously, both Alan Kayrak and Yasna Polyana can be translated as a place in the sun.

Today the village museum tells the story of that community, while the quiet streets of Yasna Polyana are scattered with the results of another idealistic endeavour: the abstract and often surreal wooden sculptures created during regular wood sculpture symposia held in the village.

Staro Stefanovo

What: A little known architectural reserve near Lovech

This village is one of Bulgaria's best kept secrets, and it is only a short drive off the main Sofia-Varna road. Located near Lovech, Staro Stefanovo is a cluster of houses on a hill. Old and in various stages of deterioration, they show little evidence that the village has been an architectural preserve since 1982. Tourists here are few, and the locals are nowhere to be seen. Some of the houses still bear traces of the decorative murals the village was famed for.

Mandritsa

What: Almost empty village of grand houses in the eastern reaches of the Rhodope

The low hills of the Rhodope south of Ivaylovgrad are home to a couple of villages that used to thrive on silkworm production and trade, but declined after the 1940s, when the strictly guarded border with Greece was imposed there. 

Mandritsa is the more impressive and livelier of these. The villagescape is defined by the large houses built by wealthy merchants. The old school and church still impress, and the square bears witness to times where there were enough people to shop in the store and eat in the restaurant. Today, most of the houses are abandoned.

Mandritsa is reported to have been founded by Albanian Christians in the 17th century. However, in the following centuries most of its residents were Greeks. They left Mandritsa after the Balkan Wars, and in the 1920s they were replaced by ethnic Bulgarian refugees from Aegean Thrace. This process of exchanging populations between the Balkan states in the 1920s was designed to ease out ethnic tensions and prevent future wars, but was also very traumatic for all affected. 

In its heyday Mandritsa had a population of 4,000. There were mills, over 20 sesame crushers, a brick factory, two schools, two churches and even a... church bell foundry. 

Nothing of that remains. The village is now home to no more than 50 people.