Bulgaria Cheap Properties

The mountains of Bulgaria are quintessential to the character and history of the entire Balkan peninsula - in fact the word ‘Balkans’ itself is Ottoman Turkish for ‘mountains’.

Bulgaria has four major mountain ranges, each with its own character and indigenous culture; they are the Stara Planina, in the centre, and the Rhodope, the Pirin and the Rila in the south. Historically, the mountains have been the cradle of Bulgarian identity, providing a safe haven for Bulgarian culture and literature during the five centuries of the Turkish yoke during which the nation was subsumed into the vast Ottoman empire.

The Black Sea coast (Cherno More) is a 380km stretch of sandy beaches, rocky coves and calm, safe sea running from the Romanian border in the north to the Turkish border in the south. This region includes the cities of Varna and Bourgas and the well-known resorts in and around Sunny Beach and Golden Sands.

The village of Trigrad, with its awesome gorge and caves, is the star attraction in the southwestern Rhodope, 30km south of Devin. The Trigrad Gorge provides one of the most spectacular vistas in Bulgaria, its sheer walls overhanging the foaming river Trigradska, which disappears into the fantastic Devil’s Throat Cave, accessible via a 150m-long tunnel. The thunder of water can be heard long before you see a huge waterfall, which vanishes into the canyon through the enormous Roaring Hall.

Prices of new apartments in some areas of Sofia have dropped so dramatically that they have pushed apartments in panelblocks out of the market, according to real estate agency Yavlena.

Pamporovo ski resort is located in the southern part of Bulgaria near the border with Greece (and the White Sea), in the heart of the Rhodope mountain. Its main attractions are the good ski facilities and natural beauty together with the proximity of very picturesque villages with old stone houses. Somewhat more tarnished than modern Bansko, it is still a delightful place to ski, with stunning scenery.

Save the Pirin Campaign

The massive scale of development at Bankso has not been without controversy. In 2001 the Simeon II National Movement was alleged by other political parties and some environmental groups to have granted building concessions for part of the national park to firms owned by party members. In 2007 a coalition of environmental groups formed a campaign

The ski resort Bansko is 153km from Sofia and its proximity to the Aegean Sea (it is 80km from the Greek coastal town of Kavala) makes it possible to combine fresh mountain air with a warm sub-tropical Greek climate. Winters are cold, and there is heavy snowfall in the mountains and average January temperatures of -5°C (23°F) in the valleys and ski resorts, and as low as -20°C (-4°F) on the high peaks. Snow cover usually lasts for five or six months

Bansko is probably the most talked about of all the ski resorts in Bulgaria and the best known in the western press. It was once a small and attractive village of stone houses in the Pirin National Park, and the site of an early ski lift in the lgsos. Skiing at Bansko was then a small-time affair, but it has been subject to some of the most intensive development seen in Bulgaria. New high-capacity ski lifts were built in 2004 using the latest Austrian technology

The town of Sozopol is situated about 30 km south of Bourgas. It was founded in the 6th century and enjoys a stunning location but large crowds. Many people choose to stay in the nearby settlement and walk to the old peninsula city. Its distinctive stone and wooden buildings form the architectural template

Kavarna has a new tradeadministrative complex Kavarna City Centre, which started operating from January 2009. It had taken a little more than a year for Planex OOD to reconstruct and modernise the otherwise unappealing, communistera concrete monster of a building in the centre of the town, and subsequently transform it into a modern steel and aluminiumglass structure, which has now become the new administrative and business centre of Kavarna and the surrounding region, Bulgarian weekly Strotelstvo Gradut reported on January 15.