First Bulgarian Empire

In this episode, we explore Veliki Preslav as the powerful political, administrative, and cultural capital of the First Bulgarian Empire. Archaeological and geophysical research reveals a vast, carefully organized medieval city with inner and outer districts, monumental stone palaces, military barracks, and subterranean dwellings. We examine how Preslav embodied Bulgaria’s ambitions during the golden age of Tsar Simeon I, when the empire emerged as a major rival to Byzantium and a flourishing center of Slavic Christian culture. The episode also traces the conflicts that weakened the empire, its eventual conquest under Byzantine emperor Basil II, and the policies of assimilation and subjugation that followed, highlighting both the grandeur of Bulgaria’s imperial achievement and the forces that brought it to an end.