Sredets

Sredets (Bulgarian: Средец) is a town in southeastern Bulgaria, part of Burgas Province, located in the proximity of Lake Mandrensko and the northern slopes of Strandzha. It was formerly named Grudovo (Read more in the History section).

Sredets is the administrative centre of the homonymous Sredets Municipality. As of December 2009, the town has a population of 9,238 inhabitants.

History

Although the area of Sredets has been inhabited since antiquity and a Bulgarian and Byzantine fortress existed nearby during the Middle Ages, the modern town was first mentioned in 1595 by one of the foreign travellers who passed through, as well as in Ottoman tax registers of 1676–1731.

Charles XII of Sweden is known to have stayed overnight in the village in 1713 en route to Constantinople and Sophronius of Vratsa worked as a teacher in Karabunar in 1792–1793. Russian Army data from 1827 mentions it as a purely Bulgarian village and it was visited by Vasil Levski in 1868.

After the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 the village was renamed Sredets in 1934. It became a town in 1960 and was renamed Grudovo in honour of Todor Grudov, a leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party-organized September Uprising of 1923. In 1992 its older name Sredets was reinstated.