Old Bulgarian Capital Gets a Funicular

Balkan Travellers, Jan 14, 2008

Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria’s erstwhile capital, will acquire a funicular that will connect the town’s periphery to its centre and allow better sightseeing opportunities within a year.

The funicular will consist of cabins with a capacity for each to fit 16 standing and seated people. They will be suspended on a 400-metre long cable that will connect a car park just outside of the city, in the foot of the Trapezitsa Hill, to the statue of Nikola Piccolo in the centre of the city. It will take ten minutes to get from one point to the other.

The project, worth one million euro, is financed by a regional development programme, national media reported. According to Daniel Panov, the head of the municipality’s tourism agency, similar funiculars exist throughout Europe, in Barcelona, Frankfurt and Budapest.

The main goals of the project are to reduce and facilitate the congested city traffic and enable tourists to view sights that are either blocked by cars or difficult to reach on foot. Tourists would be dropped off on especially built car parks outside of the city and they can then reach its centre without having to struggle with traffic jams.

Veliko Turnovo, located in the central part of the country, is a major tourist destination in Bulgaria. It is famous for having been the capital of the medieval Second Bulgarian Empire between the twelfth and the fourteenth century.

The town attracts visitors with its beautiful architecture typical of the National Revival period – the houses are perched on hills among narrow, winding streets. The medieval Tsarevets citadel, which housed the royal palace, the Trapezita fortress and the Sveta Gora Church are among the town’s major sites.

A proposal for another funicular to link the Tsarevets Fortress to the nearby village of Arbanasi, another tourist destination, by a 1.5-kilometre-long cable was turned down by the National Institute for Cultural Monuments on the grounds that it would disrupt the cultural landscape of the area.