Balchik

Balchik Балчик
Coat of arms of Balchik Coat of arms
Balchik Location of Balchik
Coordinates:
Country	Bulgaria
Province (Oblast)	Dobrich
Government
Elevation	199 m (653 ft)
Population (2009-12-31)
• City	12,196
• Urban	22,035
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal Code	9600
Area code(s)	0579

Balchik (Bulgarian: Балчик, Romanian: Balcic, Turkish: Balçık) is a Black Sea coastal town and seaside resort in the Southern Dobruja area of northeastern Bulgaria. It is located in Dobrich Oblast and is 42 km northeast of Varna. The town sprawls scenically along hilly terraces descending from the Dobruja plateau to the sea.

Etymology

The town is named after the medieval ruler Balik, brother of Dobrotitsa, after who is named the city of Dobrich.

History

File:Bulgaria-Balchik-01.jpg

Balchik's centre

File:Bulgaria-Balchik-02.jpg

Balchik's centre

File:Balchik flowers.jpg

The Balchik Botanical Garden

Founded as a Thracian settlement, it was later colonised by the Ionian ancient Greeks with the name Krounoi (renamed as Dionysopolis, after the discovery of a statue of Dionysus in the sea). Later became a Greek-Byzantine and Bulgarian fortress. Under the Ottoman Empire, the town came to be known with its present name, which perhaps derived from a Gagauz word meaning "small town". Another opinion is that its actual name derived from that of a local noble - Balik.

After the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, Balchik developed as centre of a rich agricultural region, wheat-exporting port, and district (okoliya) town, and later, as a major tourist destination with the beachfront resort of Albena to its south. The ethnic composition gradually changed from mostly Gagauz and Tatar/Turkish to predominantly Bulgarian. According to an estimate by Bulgarian historian Rayna Gavrilova the Bulgarian population before 1878 was only around 10%. According to the latest 2011 census data, Balchik's ethnic composition is the following:

• Bulgarians: 7,916 (72.9%)
• Turks: 1,715 (15.8%)
• Gypsies: 954 (8.8%)
• Others: 191 (1.8%)
• Indefinable: 79 (0.7%)
  • Undeclared: 755 (6.5%)

After the Second Balkan War, in 1913, the town was renamed Balcic and became part of the Kingdom of Romania. It was regained by Bulgaria during World War I (1916–1919), but Romania restored its authority when hostilities in the region ceased. In 1940, just before the outbreak of World War II in the region, Balchik was ceded by Romania to Bulgaria by the terms of the Craiova Treaty.

During Romania's administration, the Balchik Palace was the favourite summer residence of Queen Marie of Romania and her immediate family. The town is the site of Marie's Oriental villa, the place where her heart was kept, in accordance with her last wishes, until 1940 (when the Treaty of Craiova awarded the region back to Bulgaria). It was then moved to Bran Castle, in central Romania. Today, the Balchik Palace and the adjacent Balchik Botanical Garden are the town's most popular landmarks. Currently, three 18-hole golf courses are being developed around town, two designed by Gary Player and one by Ian Woosnam.

During the inter-war period, Balchik was also a favourite destination for Romanian avant-garde painters, lending his name to an informal school of post-impressionist painters – the Balcic School of Painting - which is central in the development of Romanian 20th-century painting. Many works of the artists composing the group depict the town's houses and the exotic Tatar inhabitants, as well as the sea.

Events

The Process – Space Festival of Contemporary Arts takes place annually in June at the town of Balchik on the north coast of the Black Sea, Bulgaria.

Trivia

• Francis Ford Coppola spent 11 days at the Balchik palace shooting scenes of Youth Without Youth.
• Balchik Ridge, in Antarctica, is named after the town.
• The currently unused Balchik Airfield is envisaged to be prepared for low-cost airlines, especially from Russia.
• Famous Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet wrote his well-known poem "Mavi Liman" (The Blue Port) in Balchik.

Twin towns and sister cities

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Bulgaria

Balchik is twinned with:

• Armutalan, Turkey
• Süloğlu, Turkey
• Bran, Romania
• Mangalia, Romania
• Stará Ľubovňa, Slovakia
• Hagfors, Sweden
• Cieszyn, Poland
• Tambov, Russia
• Galich, Russia

Gallery

• Bulgaria-Balchik-01.jpg

  Centre

• Bulgaria-Balchik-02.jpg

  Centre

• Bulgaria-Balchik-03.jpg

  An Orthodox Church in Balchik

• Balchik Bulgaria aerial photo from the Black Sea.jpg

  Aerial overview of Balchik

• Balchik boats.jpg

  The Coast of Balchik

• Balchik Palace 22.jpg

  Waterfall

• Balchik Palace 5.jpg

  The gardens of the Balchik Palace

• Balchik Palace 3.jpg
• Balchik Palace baths ifb.JPG

  The Baths of Balchik Palace

• Balchik-St1.jpg

  Balchik's main street going down the harbor

• Balchik-costal1.jpg

  A costal view of Balchik's private hotels

See also

• Decree of Dionysopolis
• Balchik Palace
• Albena
• Bulgarian Black Sea Coast
• Dobrich Province

External links

• Balchik.com – Hotels, Restaurants, News, Events and Properties
• – Online catalog of Balchik
• Balchik Photos
• Ancient coinage from Dionysopolis
• Searchable Greek Inscriptions at The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) – Segment from Decree of Dionysopolis reviewed in Inscriptiones graecae in Bulgaria repertae by Georgi Mihailov
• Quiet Nest Palace
• International Art Forum – WithoutBorders
• In The Palace International Short Film Festival, Balchik
• BulgariaLeisure.com, Tourism Information Portal (in Bulgarian and English)