The red cliffs
The rock's colour shifting with the daylight.
Spiridon Manoliu — CC BY 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dan Kollmann — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Sborisova — CC BY-SA 4.0
Cape Kaliakra is a rock headland running two kilometres into the Black Sea on red cliffs seventy metres high — the finest point on the whole Bulgarian coast. The name is Greek and means the beautiful cape. It carries the remains of a **Thracian, then Byzantine, then Bulgarian fortress**, and in the fourteenth century it was the capital of the despotate of Dobruja. The walls and gates still stand across the narrow neck of the headland. The best-known legend here is the **story of the forty maidens**: they are said to have tied their hair together and thrown themselves from the cliff rather than be taken into Ottoman captivity. A monument to them stands at the entrance. The story is popular rather than documented, but it is part of the place. The cape is also an important ecological site: the Via Pontica bird migration route passes over it, and what remains of the Black Sea **monk seal** — all but extinct — lives beneath its cliffs. **Beware the edge: there are no railings in many places and the rock crumbles.**
The rock's colour shifting with the daylight.
Fortress gates at the headland's narrowest point.
Kaliakra, northern Dobruja coast
The whole northern coast makes an excellent day by car. **Balchik** is on the way, with the Romanian Queen Marie's palace and its botanical garden terraced down to the sea — among the finest gardens in the Balkans, with the largest cactus collection in Eastern Europe. Then **Kaliakra**. A little further are **Golden Sands** and **Albena** if you want the beach, or **Yailata** — an archaeological site of dwelling caves cut into the cliff, less visited and finer than its name suggests. The whole round trip is about a hundred kilometres.