Old houses of Pomorie

The Reserve of the Old Pomorie Houses is an architectural and cultural monument located in the eastern part of the Old Town of Pomorie, a short distance from the sea shore, in Pomorie Municipality, Burgas Region. The reserve comprises approximately 10 two-storey houses connected by small cobblestone lanes — the only surviving group of pre-fire buildings in Pomorie — and represents the architectural type known as the Black Sea Urban House of the 17th–19th century. The houses survived the great fire of 30 July 1906, which destroyed the vast majority of the town's traditional buildings, leaving the Old Pomorie Houses reserve as an exceptionally rare example of a streetscape that once covered the entire town — making Pomorie, like Nessebar and Ahtopol, a town of wooden National Revival houses by the sea. In approximately 1970 the town council took a decision to restore the old houses, and their wooden cladding was subsequently renewed.The buildings are constructed in the characteristic two-storey pattern typical of the prosperous trading houses of coastal Anchialos: the ground floor is built of stone and historically served as a cellar, workshop, or shop, while the upper residential floor is of wooden-frame construction (payantatsa), clad in pine board panelling. The upper floor is characterised by richly decorated ceilings and walls. The houses in the reserve are today in private ownership and are not accessible to visitors; however, the Pomorie Historical Museum houses an exhibition that faithfully recreates the interior arrangement of the Anchialian home, allowing visitors to experience the domestic atmosphere of the 19th-century trading town. Rising among the old houses is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, built on the site of an earlier temple from the 9th century and dated to 1765.