Perperikon in Bulgaria Now Has 12 Monumental Tombs, and Its Excavator Links the Site to Ptolemy’s Pergamon

Excavations at Perperikon, a rock-cut city in Bulgaria’s Eastern Rhodope Mountains, have added three more circular mausoleums to its burial zone in 2026. That brings the total to twelve monumental tombs, according to Arkeonews. Lead archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov also argues that Perperikon was the settlement called Pergamon in Claudius Ptolemy’s second-century Geography. That identification is his hypothesis, and no inscription has confirmed it.

What the 2026 season turned up

The team worked for four months in the Southern Quarter. In the Area Sacra, the funerary zone, they found three more circular mausoleums dated to the 3rd to 6th centuries AD, along with rock-cut graves and sarcophagi. Ovcharov describes the tomb-lined road, the via sepulchralis, as comparable to those at Pompeii and the Appian Way.

The team also found a previously unknown monumental building from the 4th century, with precisely dressed stone and a carved threshold. It stands about 20 metres from an early Christian basilica of nearly 40 metres. Ovcharov suggests it may later have served as a bishops’ residence in the 5th and 6th centuries, but its original purpose is not established.

Smaller finds include a 13th-century seal of Irene Komnene Laskarina, wife of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes, Christian reliquary crosses, silver and bronze ornaments, several statuettes, and an 11th-century bronze reliquary with an image of the Virgin Mary. The team found the reliquary in the final days of the dig.

The Pergamon claim

Ovcharov first proposed about 20 years ago that Perperikon was Ptolemy’s Pergamon. Ptolemy places a Pergamon in Inner Thrace, but his coordinates are distorted. Ovcharov uses reference points such as Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv) and Augusta Traiana (modern Stara Zagora) to place it near the middle course of the Arda River, near Kardzhali, where Perperikon stands. He says the evidence is now considerably stronger. The name may also relate to pre-Greek words for a fortress or fortified height, and both Perperikon and Anatolian Pergamon sit on defensible heights, though the word’s origin is still debated.

What to keep in mind

The name identification rests on one researcher’s reading of Ptolemy’s coordinates, and no inscription from the site names the city. Early maps from Ortelius (1585) to Joly (1801) also show Pergamon in the Rhodopes, but they follow Ptolemy, so they do not independently confirm the location.

Sources

Details come from Arkeonews (12 October 2026), which reports Ovcharov’s claims and 2026 excavation results. The article cites no peer-reviewed paper, and we could not find a second outlet covering these finds. Image credit: Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov.