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LandmarkHub · 5 stops1st – 7th c. ADFree

Philippopolis – Plovdiv

Trimontium, Филипопол

city · Plovdiv Province, Bulgaria

What it is
Plovdiv is Philippopolis, the capital of the Roman province of Thrace, and the Roman city still surfaces in the modern centre: a theatre that hosts concerts again, the curved end of a stadium at the start of the main street, the city's council house, and early Christian churches and a town house with their floor mosaics.
What you’ll see
The stops each have their own page: the Roman theatre, set into the hillside of the Old Town and one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere; the stadium, whose northern curved end has been partly restored on Roman Stadium Square; the odeon, the council house of the Roman city, which also served as a theatre; the Small Basilica, an early Christian church found during building work in 1988; and the Eirene Residence, a 3rd-century house with 160 m² of mosaic floors in the underpass beneath Tsar Boris III Boulevard (en.wikipedia).
Worth the trip?
Yes. The theatre, the stadium and the odeon lie within a few hundred metres of each other, and the theatre is in good enough condition to be used for performances again.
Getting there & cost
Plovdiv is in south-central Bulgaria, 144 km south-east of Sofia, on both banks of the Maritsa (en.wikipedia).FreeHours, tickets and parking
A wide panorama of the whole Roman theatre from the top of the seating, the marble rows curving round a semicircular stage floor towards a two-storey columned stage building, with a white house on the hill to the left and distant mountains under a clear sky.
The Roman theatre, one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere, looking south towards the Rhodopes. · Photo: Община Пловдив · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A square pier of alternating brick courses and stone blocks standing beside a tall wall of rough stone, below a modern concrete walkway, with apartment buildings above.
Aqueduct piers and the fortification wall at the stadium. · Photo: Delyana · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Excavated stone foundations, column bases and fallen blocks of the ancient forum spread across a sunken area of grass, with a few standing columns on the left and the painted houses of modern Plovdiv above it.
The forum of Philippopolis, seen from the south. · Photo: Ymblanter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The stops

5 places to see, the best preserved and best known first.

See all 5 stops on the mapWhere each one is, so you can plan your own way round.Open the map →
  2. A small semicircular auditorium of stone seats rising in steps round a paved orchestra floor of large worn marble slabs, with a metal railing and a road bridge above the top row.

    Photo: Gitanes232 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    theatre · Plovdiv Province

    Odeon of Philippopolis

    The odeon has all the parts of a covered theatre: a stage building, an orchestra and tiered seating.

    Ticketed
  3. Inside a bright modern hall, the low stone walls of an early church and patches of geometric floor mosaic lie below railed walkways and glass, with display cases along the white walls.

    Photo: Realsteel007 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    church · Plovdiv Province

    Small Basilica of Philippopolis

    The church had three aisles, one apse and a narthex, and measures 20 m long with its apse and 13 m wide; a small chapel stood on the south side and a baptistery against the north aisle.

    Ticketed
  4. Tiers of worn white marble seats curving round a sunken floor, with a round-arched vaulted entrance set into the lower rows and shrubs at the top.

    Photo: Kmrakmra · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    site · Plovdiv Province

    Stadium of Philippopolis

    What you see is the sphendone, the curved end of the stadium, partly restored.

    Free
  5. A large expanse of Roman floor mosaic in an indoor hall, with circular and geometric patterns in red, ochre and grey, an octagonal marble basin standing on it, low ruined walls, and display cases along the walls behind.

    Photo: Realsteel007 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    site · Plovdiv Province

    Eirene Residence

    The house was a peristyle house, its living rooms grouped round a courtyard with columns, the service rooms to the south, and a separate wing for the servants with its own door to the street.

    Ticketed

What is there today

The stops each have their own page: the Roman theatre, set into the hillside of the Old Town and one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere; the stadium, whose northern curved end has been partly restored on Roman Stadium Square; the odeon, the council house of the Roman city, which also served as a theatre; the Small Basilica, an early Christian church found during building work in 1988; and the Eirene Residence, a 3rd-century house with 160 m² of mosaic floors in the underpass beneath Tsar Boris III Boulevard (en.wikipedia). The remains of a library, 25 m from the odeon, are described on the odeon’s page.

Between them, more of the Roman city is on show. The Bishop’s Basilica, also called the Great Basilica, is the largest late antique church found in Bulgaria; it was built in the middle of the 4th century, and it is preserved with its floor mosaics in a new museum, opened in 2021 (en.wikipedia). The stadium alone was about 250 m long and 50 m wide and could seat up to 30,000 people (en.wikipedia). The Eastern Gate of Philippopolis is open at all hours (the operator).

Is it worth the trip?

Yes. The theatre, the stadium and the odeon lie within a few hundred metres of each other, and the theatre is in good enough condition to be used for performances again. It is a city rather than a site: the remains are spread through ordinary streets, so plan on several hours on foot rather than a single visit, and expect each stop to keep its own hours and tickets.

Getting there

Plovdiv is in south-central Bulgaria, 144 km south-east of Sofia, on both banks of the Maritsa (en.wikipedia). The point on the map is in the city centre beside the stadium; the theatre is about 170 m from it, the odeon about 440 m and the Small Basilica about 740 m. Paid parking is mapped about 35 m and 60 m away (OpenStreetMap).

The stadium’s curved end on Roman Stadium Square is free. The theatre costs €3.58 for an adult, and a 72-hour “Ancient and Eternal” ticket at €30.68 covers every site the municipal institute Old Plovdiv runs, with the screening at the stadium; its ticket page still prints the old lev price beside each euro amount (oldplovdiv.bg, read 1 October 2026 — check before travelling).

Visiting details

Tickets
Free
Parking
Paid parking is mapped about 35 m and 60 m from the point, beside the stadium (OSM way/461685786 and way/205344386, fee=yes).
On foot
At the parking

History

Philip II of Macedon founded Philippopolis as a Greek city in 342 BC, on the site of the Thracian settlement of Pulpudeva. Rome conquered the Macedonian kingdom in 168 BC, and Philippopolis became the capital of the Roman province of Thracia, which the emperor Claudius created in AD 46. It stood at the centre of the road network of inland Thrace: the Via Militaris was crossed here by roads running to the Danube, the Aegean and the Black Sea. Marcus Aurelius built a new wall around the city (en.wikipedia).

The Goths under Cniva sacked it in 250. The city shrank but remained a major one: its walls were rebuilt, and new Christian basilicas and baths went up in the 4th century. The Huns sacked it again in 441/442; its walls, renewed under Justinian, held against the Avars in the 580s, and it fell to the Bulgars in 863 (en.wikipedia).

More photographs

A city square under a blue sky, edged by tall early-20th-century buildings and the domed corner of a mosque, with rows of large stone seating blocks rising out of a sunken area in the foreground.
The stadium's curved end at Dzhumaya, where the main street begins. · Photo: Mick D Kirkov · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

  • A row of tall piers of red brick banded with pale stone, three of them still joined by round arches, standing on a low stone wall along a grassy verge beside a road, under a blue sky with clouds.

    Photo: Gitanes232 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    3 km · aqueduct · Plovdiv Province

    Aqueducts of Plovdiv

    What you see is a row of tall piers in opus mixtum, courses of squared stone alternating with courses of brick, with a few arches restored between them, in the central strip of Komatevsko Shose Boulevard at the Komatevo junction.

  • A massive ruined gateway of stone and brick, its central arch still standing between two broken masses of masonry that rise above it, with a road running through the arch and trees on either side.

    Photo: BlackfishFoto · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    40 km · city · Plovdiv Province

    Diocletianopolis

    The walls run for 2,327 m round about 20 ha, 2.60–4 m thick and up to 12.5 m high, and once had 44 towers, four main gates and six smaller ones; the south and west gates survive best, the south gate rising to 13 m (bg.wikipedia).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 216927CC BY
Wikidata Q27047924CC0
Wikipedia (en) — PlovdivCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Stadium of PhilippopolisCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Odeon of PhilippopolisCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Great Basilica, PlovdivCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Small Basilica, PlovdivCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Domus EireneCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — ThraciaCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (sl) — FilipopolisCC BY-SA 4.0
Old Plovdiv (Starinen Plovdiv), the municipal institute — ticket prices and opening hourslicence not recorded