Fortress „Karvuna“ (Dionisopol)
The Ancient and Medieval Fortress of Balchik is one of the most significant and extensively studied late antique and medieval archaeological sites in Bulgaria, located in the Horizont district of the town of Balchik, about 900 metres north of the town centre, in Balchik Municipality, Dobrich Region. The fortress covers an area of approximately 110 decares — one of the largest ever built on what is today Bulgarian territory, and the largest constructed in the advanced Late Antique period (roughly the end of the 3rd to the beginning of the 7th century AD). Systematic archaeological excavations have been conducted here since 2009, carried out jointly by the Balchik Historical Museum and Sofia University "St Kliment Ohridski," where the site serves as the annual field training ground for archaeology students. The fortress is known in scholarly literature under the name Dionysopolis/Karvuna. The history of human settlement in the area of modern Balchik spans more than two millennia. In the 1st millennium BC the site was occupied by the ancient Thracian and Greek city-state of Kruni — meaning "the springs" — which the Milesian colonists later renamed Dionysopolis after the god Dionysus, whose cult they introduced. The ancient city occupied a wide coastal area extending as far north as the modern bus station and westward to the main street. When the original coastal city was severely damaged — probably by earthquake, flooding, or a combination of natural disasters — the surviving population began relocating to a new inland fortification at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century AD, on the plateau of what is today the Horizont quarter. Archaeological evidence now shows the site was occupied and built upon as early as the 2nd century AD — nearly two centuries earlier than previously thought — with traces of earlier structures and coins predating the fortress itself. The fortress as a major fortification was largely completed under Emperor Justinian I (527–565 AD), building on works begun under Emperor Anastasius. The fortress is not only the largest late antique military installation in the Black Sea region but also the most strategically significant: it existed in symbiosis with the port of Dionysopolis — the closest seaport to the imperial capital Constantinople on the old province of Lesser Scythia (modern Dobruja) — and served as the primary defensive bulwark of the Byzantine Empire's Danubian frontier. The fortress has an irregular, strongly elongated plan from south-southwest to north-northeast. The southern fortress wall is completely straight with a length of about 250 metres. At the southeastern corner a large round tower is thought to have stood, and two rectangular towers are also documented — one projecting outward from the wall, and a distinctive "double square" tower projecting both in front of and behind it. After the weakening of Byzantine power, the most vulnerable sections of the fortress facing the Dobrujan plain — rather than the sea — were reinforced with a simple but effective stone-and-earth wall accompanied by a deep ditch. For a long time this reinforcement was attributed to the Proto-Bulgarian newcomers under Asparuh, but excavations have since shown this is not the case. Following the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 680 AD, the fortress and the surrounding plain became known as the Karvunska Land, and the settlement itself as Karvuna. The site is an object of national significance and is slated for conservation, restoration, and public exhibition within the framework of a dedicated municipal project under the Operational Programme for Regional Development.
