The mound tomb
A Thracian burial mound reused in 1935.
CC BY-SA 3.0 · Sborisova — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Michał Derela — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Michał Derela — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because it was the last chance. After the Ottoman victories at Kosovo and Nicopolis, the campaign of 1443-44 was Europe's final coordinated attempt to stop Ottoman expansion in the Balkans and save Constantinople. Hungary, Poland, Venice and the papacy took part; it had early successes, then a truce was signed and broken under papal pressure — which some historians treat as a moral cause of the defeat. After Varna no comparable campaign was mounted, Constantinople fell in 1453, and the Balkans remained under Ottoman rule for four and a half centuries. The young king is venerated as a martyr in Poland.
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An open-air museum on a hill west of Varna, on the **site of the Battle of Varna** fought on 10 November 1444 — one of the battles that changed the course of south-eastern Europe. The story: with the fall of Constantinople looming, Hungary and Poland assembled a crusade under the young king **Władysław III** — king of both Poland and Hungary, and twenty years old — to drive the Ottomans from the Balkans. The armies met here, the battle ended in complete crusader defeat, and the king was killed on the field. He was afterwards called Varnenchik, the one from Varna. Its consequence was that the last serious European attempt to save Constantinople was over, and the city fell nine years later. The museum was built in 1935 on an old Thracian burial mound used as a **symbolic tomb** for the king — his body was never found. A garden and monuments surround it. **Low charges**, west of the city on the airport road.
A Thracian burial mound reused in 1935.
The plain where the last great crusade ended.
West of Varna, on the airport road