- Southern Bulgaria
Southern Bulgaria ( _bg. Южна България, "Yuzhna Balgariya") is the southern half of the territory of
Bulgaria , located to the south of the main ridge of theBalkan Mountains which conventionally separates the country into a northern and a southern part. Besides the Balkan Mountains, Southern Bulgaria bordersSerbia to the west, theRepublic of Macedonia to the southwest,Greece to the south,Turkey to the southeast and theBulgarian Black Sea Coast to the east.Geographically, the
terrain in Southern Bulgaria is much more varied than that of the north, with theUpper Thracian Plain stretching in the east, while the south and west are dominated by some of Bulgaria's highest mountains such asRila ,Pirin and theRhodopes , as well as smaller and/or lower mountains and valleys in the west, such asVitosha ,Belasitsa ,Osogovo , theSofia Valley , theSub-Balkan valleys and the Kraishte region. Southern Bulgaria covers an area of 62,414square kilometre s and has a population of 4,825,922as of 2004 (63% of Bulgaria's entire population), with apopulation density of 77.3 people per km². The three largest cities are the national capitalSofia , the largest city inThrace ,Plovdiv , and the majorBlack Sea port ofBurgas .Administratively, Southern Bulgaria includes the following 14 Bulgarian provinces:
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Blagoevgrad Province
*Burgas Province
*Haskovo Province
*Kardzhali Province
*Kyustendil Province
*Pazardzhik Province
*Pernik Province
*Plovdiv Province
*Sliven Province
*Smolyan Province
* City of Sofia
*Sofia Province
*Stara Zagora Province
*Yambol Province Historically, Southern Bulgaria covers the historical regions of
Thrace and Macedonia (Pirin Macedonia). The Bulgarian South also has a number of often unclearly defined or overlapping sub-regions, particularly in the west and southwest, such as Chech, Shop region, Kraishte, Burel, Visok,Zabardie ,Znepole ,Graovo ,Osogoviya ,Piyanets , Podgorie, Razlog,Rupchos ,Tamrash , etc. Northern Bulgaria is also conventionally divided into Southwestern, Central Southern and Southeastern Bulgaria, with slightly varying borders.In Antiquity, the
Jireček Line dividedLatin (in the north) andAncient Greek (in the south) language influence in theBalkans , with Northern Bulgaria to the north of it and Southern Bulgaria to the south. Much later, after theLiberation of Bulgaria in 1878, all of Northern Bulgaria and the region ofSofia became thePrincipality of Bulgaria while most of the rest of Southern Bulgaria was part ofEastern Rumelia until theBulgarian unification in 1885. Pirin Macedonia became part of Bulgaria after the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913, and the only Bulgarian gains by the otherwise catastrophic post-World War I Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine of 1919 were two small strips of land in southern Sakar.Gallery
ee also
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Northern Bulgaria References
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