Ahtopol

Ahtopol occupies a headland on the southern Bulgarian coast, with Strandzha Nature Park behind it and the Turkish frontier close at hand. The site was inhabited from the Neolithic period and contained a Thracian settlement before Greek colonization around 440–430 BCE. Roman rule brought the name Peronticus, while the Byzantine commander Agathon later rebuilt the town and may have supplied the name Agathopolis. Alternative accounts place that Greek name as early as 323 BCE, and an older name, Aulaiouteichos, also survived in the record.

The Arabic geographer al-Idrisi knew it as a notable and famous center. During the Middle Ages the town repeatedly passed between Byzantine and Bulgarian rulers. Byzantine, Italian and other ships entered its harbor, making trade part of everyday life. Ottoman troops raided the region at the end of the fourteenth century and called the place Ahtenbolu, although the town held out until 1453.

A tax register from 1498 counted 158 Christian families, most with Greek names and others evidently Slavic. In the nineteenth century Ahtopol remained a fishery and shipping center whose residents sailed across the Black Sea and Mediterranean, and vineyards contributed to its prosperity. Fortress walls, a monastery, church and carved fountain preserve fragments of this long coastal story.