Shumen (Bulgarian: Шумен) is a city in northeastern part of Bulgaria, notable for the huge Monument looming over the city and its proximity to two medieval capitals of Bulgaria, Pliska and Preslav, and the Madara Rider, a 
UNESCO World Heritage Site. With a population of slightly more than 70 thousand, it's the tenth largest city in Bulgaria and the centre of Shumen Province, 300 km (190 mi) to the north-east of the capital Sofia, 80 km (50 mi) west of the Black Sea coast at Varna, and 100 km (62 mi) south-east of Ruse (and Romania) on the Danube.
Understand
Name
In modern Bulgarian, shumen means literally "noisy", in masculine form (perhaps to agree with the masculine grad, "city/town"). Another possible etymology comes from the Slavic root shuma (шума), which in modern Bulgarian refers to the (fallen) foliage of trees, but in Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian means "wood, forest". The name has been transliterated in various ways throughout the years (Shoumen, Šhumen, etc), and the famous 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica lists it as "Shumla", which is also used in other English-language texts from the 19th century. Shumen is one of the Bulgarian cities that used to have a "Communist name" - it was officially renamed to Kolarovgrad between 1950 and 1965, after Vasil Kolarov (1877-1950), a major figure in the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Communist International who was born in the city.
Geography and orientation
Shumen is located at the base of the Shumen Plateau, a roughly horseshoe-shaped height in the north-eastern part of the Bulgarian Danubian Plain, between the low heights of the Ludogorie (Turkish: Deliorman) to the north and the Preslavska Mountain to the south, a part of the Predbalkan, the foothills of the Balkan Mountains. The city "spills out" from the horseshoe into the fields to the east and south-east. A small river, Poroyna ("flood [river]"), runs through the city before flowing into the Kamchia nearby.
History
The Monument
Get in
By train
Shumen Railway Station is located east of the city centre.
By bus
By car
Get around
One can get around the town well by foot, bike or taxi. Public transport by bus is also possible.
See
- 🌍 Founders of the Bulgarian State (1300 Years of Bulgaria). A huge Communist-era monument looming over the city. Its most prominent feature is the 1000-ton granite lion topping one of the angular concrete bodies, but there are also cubist-like statues of Bulgarian rulers in its base, as well as some mosaic panes depicting scenes of Bulgarian history. The monument was built on the Shumen Plateau in the early 1980s, as a part of the celebrations of the 1300th anniversary of the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire (in 681), hence the alternative name. Unlike other monuments of that era, it hasn't been abandoned and charges for admission. The long staircase that connects the monument to the main pedestrian street is also used by the citizens of Shumen for recreation.
- 🌍 Tombul Mosque.
- Kurşun çeşme (fountain).
- 🌍 Shumen Fortress.
- 🌍 Shumen History Museum.
Do
Hiking
Cross-country biking
Paragliding
One of the attractions in the city is the sport paragliding. You can see in the pictures in the following site what is paragliding in Sumen :
Buy
Eat
Drink
Sleep
You can sleep in Hotel Madara or Hotel Shumen.
If you don't like hotels there are many lodgings in the city.
Connect
Nearby
- 🌍 Madara Rider (Madara Horseman). An ancient bas-relief of a horseman spearing a lion, carved into the limestone cliffs of the Madara Plateau near the village of Madara, 15 km (9.3 mi) east of Shumen. One of the symbols of Bulgaria (it's depicted on the back side of low-denomination coins) and the centerpiece of the Madara Archeological Reserve, which also includes a very small museum, the Madara Fortress on top of the cliffs, several caves and other ruins.
- 🌍 Ruins of Pliska. An archeological reserve that contains the ruins of the first capital of the First Bulgarian Empire, next to the modern village with the same name. Pliska was established in the 9th century, and it's notable for a number of historical events, including being sacked and burned by the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I (which lead to his death and his skull being turned into a drinking cup) and being the place where the Bulgarian ruler Boris I was baptized and started the Christianization of Bulgaria. The reserve includes a small museum; the ruins of the Great Basilica are several hundred meters north of the parking lot at the entrance of the fortress, along a paved road.
- 🌍 Ruins of Preslav. Another archeological reserve. The ruins of medieval Preslav are south of the modern small town of Veliki Preslav; the reserve's archeological museum is on the road between the town and the ruins. Preslav became the second capital of the First Bulgarian Empire in 893, when Simeon I (Simeon the Great) decided to move his court there. It also became the center of the Pliska-Preslav Literary School, a circle of scholars who created the Cyrillic alphabet. A notable sub-ruin within the reserve is the unusually shaped Round (or Gold) Church of Preslav.
Go next
- Southwest of Shumen, close to Kotel, there is a nice village, Medven, with old wooden houses, a nice little waterfall, and a good restaurant and hotel (30 leva for a double room).
| Routes through Shumen |
| Pleven ← Targovishte ← | W  E |
→ Kaspichan (junction station) → Varna |
| Ruse ← Razgrad ← | N  E |
→ Runs onto  → Devnya → Varna |
Veliko Tarnovo ← Targovishte ← Becomes   ← |
W E |
→ Devnya → Varna |