Melnik and Rozhen

Melnik is officially the smallest town in Bulgaria, with a population in the low hundreds, and it sits in a natural amphitheatre of sandstone pyramids, eroded ridges and fins of pale rock that look like a scaled-down badlands. It was once far larger and richer, built on wine, and the surviving nineteenth-century merchant houses step up the hillsides with cellars cut back into the rock where the temperature stays constant. The local red, made from a grape variety grown almost nowhere else, is dark and heavy, and Winston Churchill is said to have ordered it by the barrel. A footpath of about an hour climbs through the pyramids to Rozhen Monastery, one of the oldest in the country, with a carved iconostasis and a courtyard of dark timber galleries.

Highlights

• The sandstone pyramids - eroded pale rock formations enclosing the town.
• Rock-cut wine cellars - merchant houses with cellars driven into the hillside, open for tasting.
• Kordopulov House - the largest surviving merchant house, with an enormous cellar.
• Rozhen Monastery - an hour's walk over the ridge, with carved woodwork and frescoes.

When to go

Spring and autumn; the valley is one of the hottest parts of Bulgaria in summer. Autumn brings the grape harvest. The walk to Rozhen is best in the morning before the heat.

What to expect

Melnik is tiny and can be walked in half an hour, so it works as an overnight rather than a base. The wine is genuinely heavy and tannic and not to every taste. The path to Rozhen is exposed with almost no shade. Public transport is limited and a car makes the region far easier.

Nearby

Sandanski's spa town is below; the Pirin mountains rise to the north.