Plovdiv is built on and around a group of hills, and it has never been abandoned. Thracian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Bulgarian periods are stacked on the same ground, and the city makes no attempt to separate them: a Roman theatre still hosts performances on the hillside, and the curved end of the ancient stadium emerges beneath a modern pedestrian street. At the centre of that street stands the Dzhumaya Mosque, among the oldest Ottoman religious buildings in the Balkans and still in use. Its prayer hall is covered by a grid of domes on massive piers, its vaults carry painted floral and geometric decoration, and a single minaret marks it from a distance. Uphill lies the old town, where the merchant houses of the nineteenth-century national revival, with their overhanging upper floors and painted facades, line steep cobbled lanes now largely given over to museums and galleries. Plovdiv served as European Capital of Culture in 2019, and the title fits a city where periods coexist rather than replace one another. Filmed in 4K, from the air and at street level, the programme suits strands on sacred sites, urban history and heritage.
