Few cities carry a history as layered as Plovdiv's. Its hilltop landscape bears the imprint of the ancient Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, the Bulgarian Empire, the Ottomans and even Tsarist Russia, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. Known as Philippopolis in antiquity, it preserves that sequence in visible form: a Roman theater still in use for performances, a stadium buried beneath the main shopping street, Ottoman mosques and baths, and the painted timber mansions of the National Revival climbing the cobbled lanes of the Old Town. Below them, the Kapana district of former craft workshops has become the city's creative quarter, a shift confirmed when Plovdiv served as European Capital of Culture in 2019.
