History of Obzor

Heliopolis

The first traces of a settlement here are Thracian, from the sixth or fifth century BC. Greek sources call it Heliopolis, "the city of the sun." Set between the larger trading centres of Apollonia (Sozopol) and Mesembria (Nesebar), it made a handy stop for coastal shipping and even minted its own coins.

Roman Templum Iovis

In the first century BC the whole region passed into the Roman Empire. Obzor became known for its temple of Jupiter, Templum Iovis, raised around the second or third century. Parts of it still stand in town. This is where the name Templum Iovis comes from, which for a while pushed Heliopolis off the Latin maps.

Byzantium and the Bulgarian tsars

After the third century the town changed hands between Byzantium and the young Bulgarian states, like every other place on the Black Sea coast. It was Christianised in the fourth or fifth century. In the ninth century it belonged to the First Bulgarian Empire, then to Byzantium again, then to the Second. No great walls, no special charters, a typical Black Sea town.

The Ottoman centuries

From the 1380s to 1878 Obzor was a village under Ottoman rule. The population was mixed: Bulgarians, Greeks and a few Turks, mostly farmers and fishermen. The small mosque and tekke from that time have not survived; the older buildings standing today are nineteenth-century.

After the Liberation

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 the town joined the new Bulgarian state. That is when it took its present name: Obzor, from the word for "view" or "panorama." The local churches and the Sts. Cyril and Methodius school were rebuilt, and the school still stands among the first things you notice in the centre.

Obzor the resort

Up to 1944 Obzor was a small village with a handful of guesthouses. Under socialism it turned into a workers resort: the first big trade-union hotels went up and the beach was "developed" for mass tourism. After 1989 the buildings passed into private hands, the first foreign guests arrived (mostly Germans and Russians in the 1990s), and by the 2000s the town was filling with British and other Western European visitors. The permanent population is around 2,500 today, but in summer tens of thousands stay in town.