Beglik Tash Thracian Rock Sanctuary

In the oak woods a few kilometres north of Primorsko, giant granite boulders lie scattered across a six-hectare clearing. This is Beglik Tash, a rock sanctuary the Thracians used for well over a thousand years, from the end of the Bronze Age into Roman times. Archaeologists linked it to a fertility cult of the Mother Goddess and to the worship of a hero.

Walk among the stones with a guide and look for what human hands added to the natural rock: water channels, cup-shaped hollows and huge carved footprints on the flat slabs, the remains of a labyrinth and a ring of stones read as a sun clock. One rock, weighing around 150 tonnes, rests on the ground at just two points. Nearby is a narrow "womb cave" with a stone altar at the back; at midday a beam of sunlight reaches through the entrance onto the rear wall.

The site was first described by the Czech-Bulgarian archaeologist Karel Škorpil in the late 19th century and excavated from the early 2000s. It is now an open-air museum visited by some 40,000 people a year, close to the Ropotamo river mouth and the coast road to Sozopol.