Why students go
Towering red sandstone formations stretching for kilometres, with a fortress built directly into the rocks — the most spectacular landscape in northern Bulgaria, and one of the country’s most-nominated natural wonders.
Good to know
- Roughly 160 km from Pleven — and genuinely awkward to reach. There’s no direct bus or train. By public transport you’d travel to Sofia first, then take a bus onward to Belogradchik: most of a day each way, and you’d need to stay overnight.
- Realistically, a car is the only sensible way — and even then it’s a weekend, not an afternoon.
- Best organised as a group: split a rental between four or five people.
- Nearby Magura Cave has prehistoric wall paintings, if you’re making the journey anyway.
- Go in spring or autumn — summer heat on exposed rock is punishing.