Varna travel guide

Varna, Bulgaria

By the Travel Wiki editorial team

Varna

Introduction

Varna sits on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, set in the Gulf of Varna, and serves as the country's largest seaside resort as well as the main urban centre of the Northern Bulgaria region. Its position on the water has made it a significant economic, social and cultural hub for close to three millennia.

The city began as a Thracian seaside settlement and was historically known as Odessos before growing into a major Black Sea seaport. That long history and maritime character shape what you'll find here today.

Before you go

Varna sits roughly midway along Bulgaria's northern coast, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Varna, where flat ground rises toward the southern slopes of a low limestone plateau. An artificial shipping channel divides the gulf's coastline and links the sea to the long, narrow Varna-Beloslav lake, fed by the small Provadiyska River. The Asparuh Bridge connects the city to the southern neighbourhoods of Asparuhovo and Galata; the only other crossing is the free ferry at Beloslav, west of the centre. The oldest quarters, including the Greek Quarter, fan out from the modern port, followed by 19th- and early 20th-century expansions such as the main pedestrian street and the Cathedral, and then the concrete panel blocks of the Communist era. The sea resorts — Sts. Constantine and Helena, Chayka and Golden Sands — begin immediately north-east of the city and merge almost seamlessly with it, while Kranevo, Albena and Balchik lie further north, and the Kamchia river mouth, Shkorpilovtsi and Byala lie to the south.

Summers here are warm and humid, so plan around the heat if you're walking the city. Varna is generally safe, but exercise caution regarding the mafia, and avoid anyone offering money exchange on the street — they are cheaters, typically found around the cathedral area, which is also a spot for pickpockets. If you're driving, watch where you stop: parking violations can get your car removed by the authorities, along with a penalty fee and lost time. For events and practical details, the city's official tourism portal, Visit Varna, is available in several languages.

Getting there

Varna Airport (VAR) sits about 8 km west of the centre, just off the A2 motorway, and receives flights from across Europe and beyond; Bulgaria Air is the only domestic carrier, flying to Sofia. From the airport, bus 409 connects the terminal to the centre and to the resorts of Sts. Constantine and Helena and Golden Sands — bring small-denomination cash for the ticket machine. Taxis wait in front of Terminal 2, and several car rental companies have desks at the airport.

By rail, Varna is the terminus of two main lines: Sofia–Varna, which runs the length of the country through North Bulgaria and passes through the Iskar Gorge, and Ruse–Varna, which links to Romania. Direct trains also arrive from Pleven, Ruse, Razgrad, Dobrich, Targovishte and Shumen; other northern cities such as Vidin and Vratsa require a change at Mezdra, while Veliko Tarnovo means changing at Gorna Oryahovitsa. From Bucharest, take an international train to Ruse and change there. The Central Train Station is an Art Nouveau building with a clock tower, within walking distance of the centre and the Sea Garden. Long-distance buses use the Central Bus Station on Vladislav Varnenchik Blvd, with services to Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, Burgas, Plovdiv, Istanbul, Greece, Romania and further afield. By car, the A2 motorway arrives from Sofia via Shumen, E70 crosses the Danube at Ruse, and E87 follows the coast north towards Romania and south towards Burgas and Turkey. Varna is also a port of entry on the Black Sea, with a passenger terminal and yacht marina near the Sea Garden.

Getting around

Varna is compact enough that you can cover the main sights on foot. The old part of the city and the Sea Garden hold most of what you'll want to see, and a pedestrian zone links the Cathedral square to the main entrance of the Sea Garden. Both are within walking distance of the railway station. Several beaches sit immediately below the Sea Garden, reached by an alley that begins in the same place as the street leading to the public part of the port, about ten minutes east of the station. Even the bus station is manageable on foot, roughly twenty-five minutes from the Cathedral along a commercial boulevard, but distances do add up, so plan accordingly.

For longer hops, the city runs an extensive network of buses and trolleybuses, with no metro or tram. Online maps of stops, routes and live vehicle positions are available on VarnaTraffic.com and Easyway; both have route planners that can use your GPS position to find the nearest stop, and their interfaces are in English, though the underlying maps are mostly labelled in Bulgarian Cyrillic. Varna Traffic also offers an ad-supported Android app, and OpenStreetMap includes the city's public transport routes in its Transport layer for offline use in apps such as OsmAnd or Mapy.cz, though OSM can be slow to reflect changes. All lines except Bus 409 are run by a municipal company. Buy paper tickets from machines at stops or on board, validate them when you board or change routes, and note that tickets are based on duration rather than route, with the clock starting at the moment of sale. If you plan to use public transport often over a day or two, a 24-hour pass saves you from dealing with unreliable machines; for longer stays, a pre-paid card is more cost-effective. Bus 409 connects the airport, the city centre and the north-eastern resorts, and is co-run by the municipality and a private company, whose buses do not accept municipal tickets. Buses 9 and 109 run from the Central Train Station to the resorts, while Bus 12 and Bus 17 serve Asparuhovo on the southern side of the bay, with Bus 17 continuing to Galata. Taxis are best treated with caution: check the fare per kilometre on the small plate in the lower corner of the rear door windows, and stick to reputable companies. Electric scooters are also available.

Where to stay

Varna has hotels across the full range, from family-run B&Bs and hostels to modern business hotels and a boutique property in the town centre. If you want to be in the middle of things, look at the centre: Hotel Divesta sits close to the main bus station, Boutique Splendid is opposite a grand cathedral, and Aqua Hotel Varna, near the railway station, is a modern business hotel with six conference rooms for events. Alekta Hotel is in the northern part of the Sea Garden on the outskirts, a short walk from the sea and about 20 minutes on foot from the centre, with regular buses and taxis as alternatives.

For a beach-based stay, the coast north of the city is one long developed strip of resorts — Euxinograd, St. Constantine and Helena, Sunny Day, Chaika, Riviera and Golden Sands — with villa communities offering private lodgings alongside the hotels. In St. Constantine and Helena, Motivi Hotel is a family-run B&B with a direct public transport link to central Varna about 15 minutes away, and Amfora Hotel is a short walk from the coast. Ellinis Hotel stands on the main road linking Varna with St. Constantine and Helena and Golden Sands, with balconies and sea views. Closer in, Petar Enchev Apartment offers two bedrooms plus a lounge, dining room, kitchen and shower room roughly 50 m from the central beach, and Yo Ho Hostel on Rusie is a budget option with nice decoration.

Food & drink

Varna offers plenty of good restaurants at prices that compare very favourably with other EU countries, so eating well here need not be expensive. Near the beach you'll find places such as Nord, right in front of the sand, and Arrest Bar Billiard on Primorski Boulevard, while Morski valk in the centre was temporarily closed at the time of writing. In the city centre itself, options include Korean cuisine at Kimbap on Dragoman Street, Bulgarian cooking at Restorant Trifon Zarezan on Sheynovo, and The Social Teahouse on Preslav. Around Primorski Park look for Dуrvenoto and Chjou, and a few blocks from the centre near Boteva Gradina there's Chinese Restaurant Asia.

For something mid-range, Alba serves traditional and international dishes in a yellow-green house across from the Archaeological Museum, with an outside garden in summer. Sundogs draws many of the city's foreign residents for its urban atmosphere and food, Godzilla is family friendly and known for pizzas, and Happy Bar and Grill, a Bulgarian chain based in Varna, does tasty kebabs. La Pastaria on Dragoman Street offers homemade pasta and pizza, while BM focuses on traditional cuisine and seafood at the end of the Sea Garden near the port. If you feel like splashing out, try Massa Kitchen for its atmosphere and wide-ranging menu, or Staria Chinar for traditional and Black Sea cooking at several locations around the city. For nightlife, the beach is the liveliest spot in summer; the city's clubs and bars include places like Cubo, Horizont and Planet Club, though some close during the summer months.

What to see and do

Varna's centre is compact and walkable, with the Dormition of the Mother of God Cathedral as its anchor — a symbol of the city whose surrounding park locals use as a meeting point, with the tourism information centre across the street. From the cathedral, Independence Square opens into a pedestrian area that zigzags toward the Sea Garden, passing two small parks (one with an equestrian statue of Tsar Kaloyan), the theatre and opera building, a large fountain before the Regional Courthouse, and the modernist New Yorker store. The centre itself was rebuilt in Western styles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with local takes on Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Neoclassicism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Other old Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox churches worth seeking out include the early 17th-century Theotokos Panagia, St. Athanasius, the seamen's church of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, Archangel Michael's chapel, and the 16th-century St. Constantine and Helena church of the suburban monastery of the same name.

The Sea Garden — also called Primorski park — stretches for several kilometres along the coast, one level above the beach alley, and holds most of the city's leisure attractions. Within or beside it you'll find a children's corner with amusements, a petting zoo, an alley of busts of Soviet cosmonauts, open-air exercise equipment, and plenty of cafes and restaurants. Look for the Dragons in Love drinking fountain, fed by a hot spring and topped with a small statue of a pair of dragons, and the Nicolaus Copernicus Planetarium and Observatory, a futurist building with a Foucault pendulum tower and a statue of Copernicus out front. The zoo and the dolphinarium — the only one on the Balkan Peninsula — are here too, as is the Naval Museum at the garden's south end, where the museum ship Drazki sits outside. Above the garden, a 300-step staircase climbs to the abandoned Communist-era Monument to Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, which has a decent view over the city and sea; take care, as its remote corners can attract squatters. Inland, the Archaeological Museum covers the Early Paleolithic through ancient Greece and Rome to the Middle Ages, and is noted for gold artifacts from the Varna Necropolis; it also manages the large Roman baths in the centre and the medieval grotto of Aladzha Monastery. The Ethnographic Museum, in a Bulgarian Revival house, shows 19th- and early 20th-century clothing, crafts and everyday items, while the Aquarium focuses on Black Sea flora and fauna. Just outside the city, reachable by public transport, are the cliff-carved Aladzha Monastery in Golden Sands Nature Park and Ecopark Varna, a botanical garden with wooded and open areas, picnic spots, and collections of trees, irises and roses. The Asparuhov Most bridge is a popular spot for bungee jumping.

Three days in Varna

Day one: Start in Varna itself, on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, and get your bearings in the city before venturing further along the Gulf. Begin with the Greek Quarter, then visit the Cathedral, and take in the Communist-era architecture that shapes parts of the centre. The remains of Thracian and Odessos history sit within the same city, so you can move between ancient and modern without leaving the streets. For a change of pace, head out to Asparuhovo or Galata, both within reach of the city, and finish by the water as the light fades over the Black Sea.

Day two: Turn north along the coast towards the resorts and towns of Northern Bulgaria. Chayka, Golden Sands, Kranevo, Albena and Balchik follow one another up the shore, each with its own character, and Balchik is the furthest of these before the coast bends on. If you prefer a quieter shoreline, Kamchia, Shkorpilovtsi and Byala lie to the south, where the Beloslav and Provadiyska River meet the sea near the Asparuh Bridge. Summers here are warm and humid, so plan your walking for the cooler parts of the day and keep the sea close by.

Day three: Use your last day for the places you missed, whether that means returning to a stretch of coast you liked or spending more time in Varna's centre. Sts Constantine and Helena is an easy stop if you want one more seaside pause before you leave. When the time comes, Varna Airport (VAR) connects the city to elsewhere in Europe, with Bulgaria Air among the options and Sofia reachable from there. Visit Varna at a pace that suits you, and let the Black Sea set the rhythm of your final hours.

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