Nowadays, Sliven makes a good stop-off between Sofia and Burgas on the coast – not so much for the town itself as for the Blue Rocks on its outskirts, and the lure of travelling over the mountains to Zheravna and Kotel, two “heritage” villages at the end of a wonderful bus ride.

Arrival and accommodation
Arriving at the train station at the far, southern end of bul. Hadzhi Dimitar, catch a minibus or trolleybus #1 up bul. Tsar Simeon and alight at the market, near the main square. It`s a fifteen-minute walk into the centre from the bus station, further up Hadzhi Dimitar, which brings you out on bul. Tsar Osvoboditel.

With the demise of two hotels in the vicinity, the 2-star Hotel Sliven (044/ 27065) now has a monopoly, though its tourist services desk might arrange private rooms. The only alternatives are outside town, notably the stylish Hotel Alpina (044/73016 or 89215), by the foot of the chairlift to the Blue Rocks; and Aglika campsite (mid-May to Sept; with chalets) near the Turkish-built thermal baths of Slivenski Bani, 9km southwest of town (bus #6 from the market).

The Town
A sprawl of apartments and red-roofed houses, Sliven converges on a leafy plaza where the high-rise Hotel Sliven and a modernistic theatre-nightclub complex fail to provide the focal point that the planners have evidently been groping for. The square is named pl. Hadzhi Dimitar after Sliven`s most famous son (1840-68), a statue of whom stands to the northeast of the hotel. To learn more about Dimitar, head off past the Deboya or “Depot” – once an arsenal and then a caravanserai – through the c`overed market beside the River Asenovska, crossed by a rickety footbridge.

Down a sideroad, the Hadzhi Dimitar House-Museum (Tues-Sun 9am-noon & 2-5pm) honours the man who became Panaiot Hitov`s standard-bearer by the age of twenty, later teaming up with Stefan Karadzha in Romania to form a cheta that made guerrilla raids into Bulgaria. Eventually Turkish troops caught up with them at Mt Buzludzha, where Dimitar fell in battle, and Karadzha was clapped in irons and taken to be hanged in Ruse. The building itself used to be an inn, run by Dimitar`s father; today you can see everything set up as it was when he lived here. Frugal bedding on the floor denotes the guests` sleeping quarters: the family lived in the more comfortable rooms to the rear, dining on a balcony carpeted with rush mats.

Along bulevard Tsar Osvoboditel and ulitsa Rakovski
Sliven`s other sights can be found along two streets running eastwards from the main square. Bulevard Tsar Osvoboditel is an attractive pedestrian zone of shops and cafes, ending in a flourish of banks and fountains. Notice the thouВ¬sand-year-old oak tree that survived the burning of medieval Sliven by the Turks. Among the best of the collection at the History Museum at no. 18 (Tues-Sun 9am-noon & 2-5pm) are funerary relics from Kaloyanovo – where a Thracian chieftain was buried with his favourite horse and Greek pottery – and a collection of superbly intricate shishane rifles, showing the artistry of nineteenth-century local gunsmiths. There`s an Exhibition of Religious Art (Tues-Sun l0am-noon & 2-5pm) further on, across the road.

Ulitsa G.S. Rakovski is a lot longer; hop on a bus to avoid the one-kilometre walk to the confluence of the Selishtna and Novoselka rivers, from which the town`s name (literally “confluence”) derives. En route, you`ll skirt Sliven`s nineВ¬teenth-century residential suburbs, characterized by narrow alleys and low whiteВ¬washed houses with pantiled roofs, behind high garden walls.

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