Plovdiv behind the façades: the houses, the mosque and the garden the walk passes

The walk through Plovdiv passes all four of these places. Behind each is a story the façade doesn't tell: a merchant who brought the world onto the walls of his house, a master builder from the Rhodopes, a sultan who pulled down an old mosque to raise a bigger one, and a gardener from Switzerland.

Stepan Hindliyan was an Armenian merchant who traded so much with India that it gave him his surname. He built the house in 1834–35 and brought into it everything he had seen on the road. Painters covered the walls of the rooms with views of Venice, Stockholm, Lisbon, Constantinople, Alexandria and St Petersburg, probably copied from engravings the owner brought home. On the second floor is a hall with a fountain that ran with rose water, and the house has its own bath with a steam room.

Entry is €3.58, a visit takes 30–45 min, and it's closed on Mondays.

2 daysWhere this fits into a plan already set:Plovdiv in 2 days →

2. The Kuyumdzhiev House: over a hundred windows

The house by Hisar Kapia was built in 1847 by master Hadzhi Georgi from the Rhodope village of Kosovo, for the merchant Argir Kuyumdzhioglu. From the street it looks like an ordinary two-storey house. From the courtyard you see that it drops four storeys down the slope, with over 130 windows and twelve rooms with carved wooden ceilings. Since 1938 it has held the Ethnographic Museum, with costumes, tools and furniture from around Plovdiv, but the house itself is the main exhibit.

Entry is €3.07, a visit takes 45–90 min, and it's closed on Mondays.

3. The Dzhumaya Mosque: older than the Old Town's houses

The first mosque on this spot went up in 1363–64, right after the Ottoman conquest, on the foundations of a church. In the first half of the 15th century Sultan Murad II pulled it down and built a new, bigger one, and that is the building standing today. The walls are laid in bands of stone and brick, in the Byzantine way, and inside are wall paintings of flowers and tendrils with quotations from the Quran, from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Entry is free, daily 9–17, outside prayer times, and 15–20 min is enough for a visit. Dress modestly; headscarves are provided at the entrance.

When to goWhen a walk through the city is most pleasant:The best time to visit Plovdiv →

4. Tsar Simeon's Garden: a park for one exhibition

In 1892 Plovdiv hosted the First Bulgarian Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition, and for its opening the Swiss gardener Lucien Chevalas laid out a new city park. Chevalas had come to Plovdiv in 1879 as the personal gardener of Prince Alexander Bogoridi, and the city later made him an honorary citizen. The lake and the fountain of the goddess Demeter, by the Italian sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi, survive from that time. The park has no ticket and no headline sight, and that is its value after a day full of houses and stone.