Nikopol Bulgaria
Bulgaria

20 Cruises availables At departure or passage at this port

Riviera Travel (20 Cruises)


Frequently Asked Questions

The boat ties up to the bank at the foot of the houses, often for half a day only. There is no terminal and no shops: you walk down the gangway straight into rural Bulgaria.
Everything is on foot. The climb to the remains of the medieval fortress is what gives the stop its meaning, and the walk back down to the Saints Peter and Paul church and the shaded squares completes it.
Sections of wall and grassy terraces on the height above the rooftops, with a view that explains everything: Nikopol locked the Danube. The stronghold was the last refuge of the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman, taken by the Ottomans in 1395.
The Battle of Nicopolis, the last great European crusade. The crusader army of King Sigismund of Hungary, with French, Burgundian and German knights, laid siege beneath the ramparts; Sultan Bayezid fell on it and crushed it. The young John the Fearless was captured there along with the flower of Burgundian chivalry.
A thirteenth-century stone sanctuary, among the oldest in Bulgaria. It stands in the centre, a few minutes' walk from the bank.
Low houses, shaded squares and a layering of traces that ignores chronology: medieval stone, communist-era facades, satellite dishes. The curious can hunt for the Ottoman fountain and the column fragments reused in the low walls.
Yes: a hat, water and shoes that can handle the climb to the heights. Summer heat imposes a slow pace on its own, and the path to the fortress is unimproved.
Very few, and that is the point. You buy apricots or tomatoes at the market and trade a few words with a fisherman. Almost nothing here targets the traveller: the town simply lives its ordinary life.
Very wide, with the Romanian bank opposite where the outlines of Turnu Măgurele appear. Tugs push their barges one way, swallows dart the other. The sunsets over the Romanian plain are among the broadest on the river.
It depends what you are after. Nothing is spectacular at first glance: this is a call told through time, wind and grass on ruins, in a place where Europe tipped before being forgotten.