Alex S.
Google
Verdict: museum with solid exhibit items, good narratives, well-thoughtout route and theme planning for exhibitions, up-to-date museography, complete Bulgarian-English labels and signs -- one of the few museums in Bulgaria that is able to do so. Highly recommend visiting!
Details: two floors of exhibitions along very long wings in many rooms, so be prepared to walk. Ordered chronically, each room has complete English texts to introduce the origin and discovery story around the artifacts, and some particularly important or interesting artifacts have their own narratives, also in both Bulgarian and English. There are lots of archeology and historical background info to help you appreciate what you are seeing, and to grasp the long and layered history of Varna and its surrounding regions, and to get a sense of how this place has evolved over millennia.
There's no map of the museum at the ticket desk or elsewhere, but the rooms are arranged and laid out clearly enough in chronical order, so just follow each room's entry and exit, then a route will emerge naturally to take you through Varna's history and every room in the museum.
Some rooms may have a temporary, thematic exhibition mounted so the chronical route through rooms may be interrupted at some point (there was a temporary exhibition when we visited) but the route returns after the temporary exhibition rooms. Basically just keep walking to and from each room, and you won't miss anything.
Facility is update in most rooms with minimal glare glass cases and in-case lighting. Temperature control is in-place as well, at least on the first floor.
Protips:
- most interesting or impressive stuff, such as craft gold pieces from 5th millennium BC, is on the first floor.
- there's an inner courtyard you can hang out or chill at.
- you can pay by card.
