Strandzha

Strandzha Nature Park was created in 1995 at the south-eastern tip of Bulgaria, beside the Turkish border and the Black Sea coast, and at some 1,161 km² is the country's largest protected area.

Its value is biogeographical. The Strandzha range holds relict Tertiary forests that survived the glaciations thanks to the mild, humid climate of Pontic influence: oak and oriental beech woods with an evergreen understorey of Pontic rhododendron, laurel and holly, a formation found nowhere else in Europe and related to the forests of the Caucasus and of northern Anatolia.

The Uzunbudzhak reserve, within the park, has been a biosphere reserve under the MAB programme since 1977 and was one of the seventeen designations with which Bulgaria joined the programme that year; in 2017 it was renewed under the new biosphere park model, and on that occasion it was described as covering Strandzha park. The territory also preserves a notable cultural heritage, with Thracian sanctuaries, villages of traditional architecture and the ritual of nestinarstvo, the dance over embers, inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.