Bulgariathree appsChapter II · Land
Travel Guide Bulgaria
Guide to the whole of Bulgaria · iPhone, iPad and Android
In Travel Guide Bulgaria the whole country is already on your phone: an offline map, 27,220 places, narration and a phrasebook, all of it working in aeroplane mode. It is made for travellers who are already on the road, with limited time and not always a signal, and it answers one question: what is worth the time you have, from where you are standing. The app is free for iPhone, iPad and Android, with no account, advertising or tracking.
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The guide needs no account and contains no advertising, analytics or third-party trackers. Saved places, visited places, trips and your position stay on the phone, and the App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected”. The app goes online in only two cases: to fetch the weather forecast, sending a position rounded to about a kilometre, and to load a full-size photograph that is not already stored in it. Location is optional: the guide can also work from a town you choose.
ChallengeIn the mountains and in villages the signal drops, and the map goes with it
How it helpsThe map of the whole of Bulgaria, 27,220 places, search and narration are built in and work in aeroplane mode without using mobile data.
Challenge“Top 10” lists always show the same places
How it helpsSearch covers 27,220 places, from UNESCO sites to centuries-old trees, and recommendations put the most significant first.
ChallengeYou have only a few free hours
How it helps“I have three hours” works out how far you can get on foot, by car or by bus, allows for the journey back and does not suggest a museum that will close before you have seen it.
ChallengeOn a long drive, interesting detours go unnoticed
How it helpsSet where you start and where you are going: the guide shows where it is worth stopping and how many minutes each detour will take.
ChallengeInformation online is out of date or unverified
How it helpsEvery place shows where its information comes from and when it was checked, and unreliable opening hours are marked “unknown” instead of being guessed.
ChallengeSigns and conversations are in an unfamiliar language
How it helpsDescriptions and narration are available in 12 languages, and 52 Bulgarian phrases can be played aloud or shown full-screen.
A vector map of the whole of Bulgaria is built into the app and drawn on the phone itself: roads, rivers, villages and footpaths. There is nothing to download in advance and no mobile data to spend. Search, place pages, narration, the phrasebook, the planner and the audio walks all work in aeroplane mode. A connection is needed only for the weather forecast and for some full-size photographs; without one, the rest of the guide carries on as usual.
Monasteries, Thracian tombs, Roman theatres, fortresses, caves, waterfalls, glacial lakes, peaks, mountain huts, painted churches, beaches and museums, from every UNESCO World Heritage site in Bulgaria to an ancient oak nobody photographs. Search covers all 27,220 places and finds them however the name is typed: in Cyrillic, in Latin letters or in the official transliteration. Recommendations, by contrast, show only the places that are truly worth your afternoon.
Set the time you really have — one hour, three hours, half a day or a full day — and how you are getting around: on foot, by car or by bus. The guide counts the journey back and shows only what you can reach, see properly and still return from in time. It will not send you to a museum that closes before you could finish looking at it. The forecast shapes the choice too: indoor places when rain is likely, water and shade in the heat.
Choose places and the planner puts them in an order that cuts the driving, respects opening hours and gives a real arrival time for every stop, at a relaxed, normal or packed pace. A trip can run over several days, and you can keep several trips at once. For a drive, set where you start and where you are going: the guide shows what is worth stopping for in between and what each detour costs in minutes. The decision stays yours.
For any place you can play narration in any of the app’s twelve languages, spoken by the voices already built into your phone, with no audio files and no internet. Self-guided audio walks through towns begin the commentary at each stop as you arrive. While a walk is running, the guide keeps the screen on, because it follows your position only while the walk is open. That way the next stop and the distance to it are always in front of you.
About 500 places have descriptions written specifically for this guide; the information on the rest comes from the open data of Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, and the guide says so. Every place shows where its information came from and when it was last checked, with links to the sources. When opening hours cannot be trusted, it says “unknown” instead of guessing, and a missing price is never shown as free entry. “Report a problem” opens your own mail app, so you can see exactly what is sent.
Yes. The map, all 27,220 places, search, narration, the phrasebook, the planner and the audio walks work in aeroplane mode. A connection is needed only for the weather forecast and for some full-size photographs.
Yes. There is no price, subscription, in-app purchase, advertising or account. The App Store age rating is 12+, because the practical articles mention rakia and Bulgarian wine and one collection is devoted to wineries.
On iPhone the installed app takes about 290 MB. Most of that is the map of the whole country, the place database and the photographs, so nothing has to be downloaded before the trip.
The interface and the place descriptions are available in 12 languages: English, Bulgarian, German, Romanian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Italian, French and Spanish. Narration uses the phone’s built-in voices in the same 12 languages, and the guide’s language can be changed in the settings.
Yes. A trip is divided into days: for each day the planner orders the stops, respects opening hours and shows an arrival time at every place. You can keep several trips at once, and for a drive between two towns the guide shows what is worth a detour on the way.
No. Travel Guide Bulgaria is an independent guide made by Andrii Matiushev under the Zydeno name. It is not an official publication and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Ministry of Tourism, any municipality or any museum; place data comes from Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, and photographs from Wikimedia Commons under free licences.
Travel Guide Bulgaria
Get the app
Documents and support
AvailableI · Language
Bulgarian course and dictionary
iPhone, iPad and Android
665lessons
AvailableIII · Memory
An illustrated history of Bulgaria
iPhone and iPad
59stories
