Pliska

Today, Pliska is a small town in northern Bulgaria, but it used to be the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire established in 681, which means that the town is 1338 years old!

Pliska functioned as the capital city from 681 A.D. until 893 A.D. It was way ahead of its time in comparison to the other nations settled in Europe in the 7th century. It had a complex water-supply network, whose channels are still visible. Pliska was an important historical and cultural site since the conversion of the Bulgarian nation from paganism to Christianity started here, in 865 A.D. Three of the students of Cyril and Methodius (the two brothers who invented the Slavic alphabet), came to Pliska after they were persecuted. Those three men – Naum, Kliment, and Angelarii, worked with the Bulgarian ruler at the time, Boris I, to make the people literate, and their work helped the rest of the Slavic countries to Christianize their people. After the Bulgarians were christened, the next ruler moved the capital to another town called Preslav, which symbolized a new beginning for the nation. Pliska was still a functioning town though until the Ottomans captured it in the 16th-17th century.