07/11.- Varna, Bulgaria!!! Varna is Bulgaria's third largest city. It was an inhabited place even before the Greeks established the colony of Odessos there about 580 B.C. Later, under the Romans and their successors, the Slavs, Varna became a major port trading with Constantinople, Venice and Dubrovnik. In 1393 it was captured by the Turks, who made it an important military centre. Nowadays it is the main port for both naval and commercial shipping and, adjacent as it is to the coastal resorts of Golden Sands, St. Constantine (Drouzhba) and Albena, it has a cosmopolitan atmosphere. Varna's social life revolves around pl. Nezavisimost, where the opera house and fountain provide the backdrop for an array of restaurants and cafés. The square is the starting point of Varna's evening promenade, which flows eastward from here along bul. Knyaz Boris I. To the north of pl. Nezavisimost, Varna's main lateral boulevard (bul. Mariya Luiza to the east; bul. Hristo Botev to the west) cuts through pl. Mitropolit Simeon, an important traffic intersection dominated by the domed Cathedral of the Assumption. Constructed in 1886 along the lines of St Petersburg's Cathedral, it contains a splendid iconostasis and bishop's throne, supported by a magnificent pair of winged panthers, carved by craftsmen from Debâr in Macedonia. South of the cathedral in the city gardens stands the Old Clock Tower, a fairly unremarkable structure paid for by the city guilds in the 1880s, whose silhouette serves as something of a trademark for the city. The streets are lined with fashion boutiques, exchange bureaux, Japanese car showrooms, video-rental stores, and fast-food outlets staffed by mini-skirted waitresses, while baseball-capped youths practise skateboarding manoeuvres in the main square, or stroll along the main boulevards in a range of pseudo-designer summer threads more reminiscent of west coast USA than some far-flung eastern outpost of Europe. In general, however, the downtown area is a place in which to stroll and enjoy the vigour of emergent enterprise culture rather than visit specific sights. Most of the latter are to the south and east, among the residential streets between the centre and the port, although the very busy but otherwise undistinguished bul. Mariya Luiza is home to the biggest of the city's museums. Further from the centre, a granite monument commemorates the Battle of Varna, which took place in 1444. Here 30,000 Crusaders were waiting to sail to Constantinople when they were attacked by 120,000 Turks. The Polish King Ladislas was killed in a bold attempt to capture the Sultan Murad. The subsequent retreat foreshadowed Christendom's general retreat before the advancing Ottomans.