Ruse

Ruse is a cosmopolitan city at a crossroads. In its more than 20 centuries of history, a variety of ages have left an imprint on a variety of cultural strata. The spirit of the city, however, always remains unchanging, everlasting and free like the big European river – a river that generates influences, connects, inspires life and promises a future…

Ruse is the biggest Bulgarian city on the Danube River and the most significant transport, logistics, business and cultural centre of North Bulgaria. It is located 300 km away from Sofia and 70 km from Bucharest.

23 centuries ago, an ancient Thracian port marked the beginning of the town. In the late 1st century, the Roman fortress of Sexaginta Prista (from Latin “port for 60 ships”) became part of the Roman Danube Limes, the northern frontier of the empire. Today, the ruins of Sexaginta Prista are an open-air museum exposition.

Ruse welcomes its guests with an impressive architectural heritage inspired by the progressive European spirit of its citizens, who invited eminent European architects at the turn of the 20th century to build the architectural environment of the city. Today, dozens of heritage-listed buildings have the European Heritage label. Ruse is a port on the Danube, where cultural traces from the West and the East, from the North and the South have landed and got rooted. The people living here, equally with the strangers, see Ruse’s identity as a bridge between cultures. “Anything I subsequently experienced had already happened in Ruschuk” is the summary the Nobel Prize winner in literature Elias Canetti has given about his birthplace.

Representing the multifaceted and multicultural Danubian space, jointly with Giurgiu, its Romanian twin city, Ruse is determined to become a highly visible European centre and a cross-border cooperation leader.