Varna - City of Bulgaria

Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 80th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 351,151. The actual daily population, including commuters, is widely believed to have made it the country's second-largest city.

Varna is among Europe's oldest cities. The name Odessos, first mentioned by Strabo, was pre-Greek, perhaps of Carian origin. Long before the Thracians populated the area, several prehistoric settlements best known for the eneolithic necropolis, eponymous site of old European Varna culture and the world's oldest large find of gold artifacts existed within the modern city limits.

Varna is the northern one of two major Bulgarian cities on the coast of Black Sea.

Varna was made one of the Quadrilateral Fortresses severing Dobruja from the rest of Bulgaria and containing Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars. The Russians temporarily took over in 1773 and again in 1828, following the prolonged Siege of Varna, returning it to the Ottomans two years later after the medieval fortress was razed.

The University of Economics, founded in 1920 as the Higher Business School, is the second oldest Bulgarian university, the oldest one outside Sofia, and the first private one—underwritten by the Varna Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Prof. Tsani Kalyandzhiev, who was educated at Zürich and made a career as a research chemist in the United States, was its first Rector.

The Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy is successor to the nation's oldest technical school, the Naval Machinery School, established in 1881 and renamed His Majesty's Naval Academy in 1942. Other higher schools include the Medical University, the Technical University, the Chernorizets Hrabar Varna Free University—the first private university in the land after 1989, three junior colleges, and two local branches of other Bulgarian universities.

There are four Bulgarian Academy of Sciences research institutes a government research institution , and a now-defunct naval architecture design bureau. The Institute of Oceanology has been active in Black Sea deluge theory studies and deepwater archaeology in cooperation with Columbia University, MIT, UPenn, and National Geographic.

Varna has some of the finest and oldest museums, professional arts companies, and arts festivals in the nation and is known for its century-old traditions in visual arts, music, and book publishing, as well as for its bustling current pop-culture scene. Over the past few decades, it developed as a festival centre of international standing. Varna is a front-runner for European Capital of Culture for 2019, planning to open several new high-profile facilities such as a new opera house and concert hall, a new exhibition centre, and a reconstruction of the Summer Theatre, the historic venue of the International Ballet Competition.