Поморие

An ancient city of salt, healing mud and wine on the shores of the Black Sea.

Pomorie was founded at the end of the 5th century BC. by Greek colonists under the name of Anchialo, on a narrow rocky peninsula jutting into the Black Sea. Settlers came from the neighboring Greek colonies of Apollonia (present-day Sozopol) and Mesambria (present-day Nessebar) and quickly turned the new settlement into a thriving port city whose wealth was built on the extraction of salt from the shallow coastal lagoons, a tradition that continues to this day. During the Roman era, Anchialo was an important administrative and commercial center of the province of Thrace. Christianity entered the city early - according to tradition, the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called passed through here on his way to the future Bulgarian lands, and in the 2nd century there was already a church community in Anchialo. The city later became the seat of a bishopric and retained this role throughout the Middle Ages. The Bulgarian state conquered Ankhialo in 812, during the time of Khan Krum. Near the city, by the Acheloi River, on August 20, 917, the troops of King Simeon the Great defeated the Byzantine army in one of the greatest battles of the European Middle Ages — a victory that established Bulgaria as the leading power in the Balkans. In 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, Anchialo was captured by the Ottomans and renamed Ahovo. The city remained under Ottoman rule until the Liberation in 1878. During this period, the old Pomorie monastery "St. George", founded in the 7th century by Greek settlers, was also destroyed; at the end of the 17th century, the Turk Selim Bey, healed according to the legend of this place, rebuilt the monastery and became its first abbot. Today's monastery church was built in 1856 on the foundations of the previous temple. After the Liberation, Anchialo remained within the borders of Eastern Rumelia until the Unification in 1885 and gradually became a Bulgarian Black Sea town with developed malting, fishing and viticulture. In 1934, by decree, the ancient name Anchialo was replaced by the current Bulgarian name Pomorie. In the 20th century, the salt pans near the city, known as Pomorie Lake, established themselves as one of the most important centers for the extraction of sea salt and healing lye in Bulgaria, and the old part of the city retains the characteristic Black Sea wooden architecture of the narrow streets. Today, Pomorie is both an active port city, a viticultural center and a balneological resort, famous for its healing tourism - mud and salt treatment from the lake, the active monastery "St. George", the old quarter and the yacht marina.