All direct flights to Bulgaria from the UK & Ireland

Destination summary

Allow us to let you in on one of Europe's best-kept secrets. Tucked away in the continent's southeastern corner, between the holiday resorts of Greece and the exotic promise of Turkey, Bulgaria has, up until recent years, been less well-known than even its mysterious Balkan neighbour Romania.

Yet Bulgaria's relative obscurity has its advantages: visitors are likely to be pleasantly surprised by the country's notable range of attractions. The bigger Bulgarian cities illustrate this variety perfectly. With no access to the Aegean, the Bulgarians have put considerable effort into developing their Black Sea resorts: Varna is regarded as 'the Pearl of the Black Sea', and Bourgas combines being the country's largest port and Duty Free Zone with  a lively student scene. Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second (and most evocatively named) city, can boast great history, having served - in various incarnations - as part of the Greek, Roman and Macedonian empires.

Still, most tourists prove inexorably drawn to the capital Sofia. Here, old and new, politics and commerce, mingle on every street corner: the old city council building, once home to fevered left-wing debate, today sits in the shadow of the gleaming monument to capital that is the Sheraton hotel. The spiritual - in the form of the Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church and museum-of-icons The Crypt - still holds some sway, and with Sofia University prominently positioned, the capital city maintains an irresistibly youthful and changeable dynamic.