According to Clothesbliss, Melnik is the smallest and most charming town in southwestern Bulgaria. Located 186 km from Sofia, 23 km from Sandanski, at the foot of the Pirin Mountains, in the valley of the Melnishkata and Rozhenskata rivers. Melnik nestled among the unique sand pyramids, ancient architectural buildings, wine cellars and amazing nature, incomparable with any other part of the entire Balkan Peninsula.
How to get to Melnik
By bus from the cities of Sofia, Sandanski, Petrich, Blagoevgrad, Damyanitsa.
By train from Sofia (direction Sofia-Athens) to Damyanitsa station (12 km from Melnik).
Hotels
A small number of hotels will pleasantly surprise you with their hospitality and comfort, and the small size of the resort allows you to get anywhere in Melnik in a matter of minutes.
Entertainment and attractions Melnik
Melnik is considered a historical reserve, an open-air museum city: its houses impress with their rich architecture, and the unique pyramids of sand and limestone surrounding Melnik amaze the imagination with bizarre shapes and outlines. The most famous secular buildings of the city: Boyar (Byzantine) house – the oldest residential building in Bulgaria; Pashov House, where the local historical museum and the house of Kordopulov, a famous wine merchant, are located. There is a wine tunnel exhibition where you can taste local wines.
There are about 100 cultural monuments in the city: churches, monasteries, old houses. Of the surviving buildings, the monastery of St. Nicholas (12th century), the Slavov fortress (13th century), the church of the apostles Peter and Paul, the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Roman bridge, as well as the old Turkish bath deserve attention. But perhaps the most striking attraction of Melnik is the local wine. More than three centuries ago, the city became famous for its vine drink and tobacco. They say the wine was so thick that it was worn in scarves! Until now, Merlot, Kabernet Sauvignon and Melnik, made using a special technology, are exported to many countries of the world.
Huge barrels of wine are stored right in the sandy cliffs, where you can taste the incomparable taste of an aromatic drink known throughout the world.
Rozhen monastery
5 km from Melnik is the Rozhen Monastery of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the road to which passes through the unique sand pyramids (on foot from Melnik about 1.5 hours). Almost a thousand-year history of buildings has undergone many changes: fires, warriors, reconstructions.
Today the Rozhen Monastery includes the building of the monastery, the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Church of the Holy Mother of God, in which wonderful frescoes and stained-glass windows have been preserved.
The openwork carving decorating the altar of the monastery is beautiful in its execution, it was made by craftsmen long before the beginning of the Renaissance. The Rozhen Monastery has an interesting hexagonal shape, and the interior decoration (icons, altar, ancient paintings) is a unique monument of fine art in Bulgaria.
Not far from the monastery is the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius, built on the initiative of Yane Sandanski, a Bulgarian revolutionary. Here he spent the last years of his life and was buried near the temple.
