Pobiti Kamani (the Stone Forest)

A stone forest eighteen kilometres west of Varna: on a sandy waste stand hundreds of limestone columns up to seven metres high, hollow inside and with no foundation in the ground at all. The field stretches for several kilometres and is broken into several groups; the most accessible lies right beside the highway to Sofia. The nature of the phenomenon is disputed to this day. One version explains the columns as coral structures of an Eocene sea, another as mineralisation around methane seeps from the sea floor, a third takes them for the result of the weathering of sandstones. Not one of them accounts for everything, and guidebooks usually list all three. Around the columns lies real sand, in places with dunes, and the site looks like a piece of desert in the middle of a Bulgarian forest - the microclimate here is drier and hotter than the surroundings. The territory was declared a natural landmark in 1937; there is an entrance fee, the paths are marked out, and there is almost no shade.

Address

2, Slanchevo

On the map