Ruse

Ruse (Bulgarian: Русе, also romanized as Rousse) is a city on the south bank of the Danube river, in North Bulgaria.

Understand
Present-day Ruse is the fifth largest Bulgarian city and is an important economic, financial and cultural hub.

Get in
Ruse is located on the South bank of the Danube, across from the Romanian city of Giurgiu. By road, the city is about 200 km from Varna and 300 km from Sofia. From Romania, a bridge connects Ruse to Giurgiu, which until 2013, when the bridge in Vidin was completed, was serving as the westernmost land connection between the two countries. If you intend to cross the border from Giurgiu, an (~6 Bulgarian Leva, 13 Romanian Lei) per car crossing tax applies each way.

The closest international airport is 75 km north, in Bucharest, in neighboring Romania - a shuttle bus connects the airport to the city once a day. Alternative airports are Sofia and Varna.

The city is well served by railroads, with multiple connections to Sofia and Varna, but also to Bucharest (2x daily, but note that the train is rather expensive -, and very slow, taking about 3 hours for the journey), Budapest, Kyiv, Moscow, Athens and Istanbul. The train station is at the southern end of Borisova Avenue, south of the city centre.

Buses also link Ruse to the rest of Bulgaria (different frequencies daily), places in Greece (daily) and to Giurgiu (twice daily) and Bucharest (twice daily at 12:30 and 15:30, takes 1 hour and 30 min and costs 20 лв, drop at Piața Unirii). The bus station is located next to the train station.

Danube cruises generally stop at Ruse harbour.

It is also possible to cross the border without paying the tax by walking the crossing.(See the DO section)

Do

 * Cross the border without paying the tax by walking the crossing. The border patrol will check passports and ID on both sides and it takes approx. 15 minutes to walk. However, the bridge itself is far from both the town of Ruse and Giurgiu and this can either require a taxi or hitching. You can take buses 11 or 25 from Pantheon bus stop to arrive to the bridge.

Basarbovo
A village south of Ruse that lies directly on Road 501, which in turn branches off E85/Road 5 close to where it exits Ruse.

Ivanovo
Ivanovo is a village of 800 people, south of Ruse, notable for the  described below. It can be reached by train from Ruse (several times a day, 25 min travel time). By car, it requires either following Road 501 further south from Basarbovo, or taking the larger E85 and then turning east at the appropriate crossroads (marked with a pillar-like monument). The churches are within a protected area, Nature Park Rusenski Lom (lit. 'Lom of Ruse'), which encompasses several canyons formed by the river and its tributaries as they snake through low, wood-covered hills.



The caves in the region had been inhabited by monks from the 1220s, when it was founded by the future Patriarch of Bulgaria Joachim, to the 17th century, where they hewed cells, churches and chapels out of solid rock. At the peak of the monastery complex, the number of churches was about 40, while the other premises were around 300, most of which are not preserved today.

Second Bulgarian Empire rulers such as Ivan Alexander and Ivan Asen II frequently made donations to the complex, as evidenced by donor portraits in some of the churches. Other patrons included nobles from the capital Tarnovo and nearest big medieval town Cherven, with which the monastery complex had strong ties in the 13-th and 14-th century. It was a centre of hesychasm in the Bulgarian lands in the 14th century and continued to exist in the early centuries of the Ottoman rule of Bulgaria, but gradually decayed.

The monastery complex owes much of its fame to 13th- and 14th-century frescoes, preserved in 5 of the churches, which are thought of as wonderful examples of Bulgarian mediaeval art. The rock premises used by the monks include the St Archangel Michael Chapel ("The Buried Church"), the Baptistery, the Gospodev Dol Chapel, the St Theodore Church ("The Demolished Church") and the main Church, with the 14th-century murals in the latter one being arguably the most famous of all in Ivanovo and noted as some of the most representative examples of Palaeologan art. Many century-old inscriptions have also been preserved in the monastical premises, including the famous indented inscription of the monk Ivo Gramatik from 1308–1309.

The Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979.

Cherven
A village south of Ruse. The name means "red" in masculine form. The village either got its name from the medieval fortress, or the other way round. Cherven can be reached by train, if you get off at Koshov (Кошов, three trains daily, 30 min from Ruse), but you'll have to walk almost to the fortress. By car, Cherven is on a single-lane road that branches off Road 501 south of Ivanovo and continues east to merge into Road 202.



Go next

 * Leaving Bulgaria: Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is to the north
 * Along the Danube:
 * to the east, Tutrakan and Silistra
 * to the west, the small towns of Svishtov and Nikopol (and between them, Belene, the notorious site of a Communist-era penal labour camp on an island in the Danube that still serves as a prison)
 * To the south-east: Razgrad, Shumen and Varna
 * To the south-west: Pleven or Veliko Tarnovo
 * If you've followed Road 501 south to visit Basarbovo, Ivanovo and/or Cherven (see above), other small roads can put you back on track to either of the two options above, or further south to Popovo and Targovishte