Capitals of Khans and Tsars

From practically anywhere in the center of the city of Shumen in eastern Bulgaria, a monument called the Founders of the Bulgarian State is impossible to miss under the glow of the summer afternoon sun. Its 171-foot-tall concrete bulk juts from a plateau above the city, piercing the sky over the Danubian Plain like a ship’s figurehead. Despite the monument’s intimidating contours and the fact that it was installed by the country’s repressive twentieth-century communist regime, it is belove

Ben O’Donnell is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.