Rezovo

Researchers have attempted to connect the village’s name to that of Rhesus of Thrace, a Thracian king from the Iliad, and while the existence of an ancient settlement on the site of the modern village has been established (with the earliest artifacts dating to the 4th century BC), any connection to Rhesus’ personality has proven difficult to establish. The region was formerly a center of large-scale metallurgical industry, having the greatest ancient slag deposit in Bulgaria. The medieval fortification of Castrition is thought to have been located on Cape Kastrich, north of contemporary Rezovo.

Rezvi, a hamlet of 41 Christian households, was first documented in Ottoman registries. In the 18th century, it was known as Büyük Rezve („Big Rezve“) and was shown on Ottoman maps as a sea port. According to Austrian Wenzel von Brognard and other western travelers of the 18th century, the river mouth at that location had a fine dock appropriate for storm and winter refuge. Rezovo has shifted slightly in position multiple times: its earliest known site is the same as its current one, near the seashore. However, due to continuous assaults by Caucasian Laz pirates, the people were compelled to relocate interior, eventually settling in the Kladarsko Bardo region ten kilometers to the west, also along the Rezovo River, in the nineteenth century. By 1900, the „Old Rezovo“ had grown to 70–80 dwellings and included an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to Saint Elijah the Forerunner. The beachfront area was not fully abandoned; due to the favorable climate, it was utilized as grazing.

Rezovo people played an active role in the Bulgarian Ilinden-Preobrazhenie in 1903. Unification with their Bulgarian counterparts in the Principality of Bulgaria. However, the Ottoman authorities repressed the insurrection, and the majority of Old Rezovo was razed to the ground. Locals who remained lived near the shore, about where the village’s first known incarnation had been. In 1906, the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena was completed. Rezovo became part of the Kingdom of Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, and a small number of Bulgarian refugees (25 families) from other regions of Eastern Thrace that remained under Ottoman administration relocated in the settlement. According to Lyubomir Miletich’s demographic census of the Ottoman province of Edirne in 1913, published in 1918 as The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians, Rezovo (oво) was a hamlet in the district of Vassiliko populated by 70 Bulgarian Exarchist households prior to the wars.

Following the conflicts, the residents’ primary occupations were charcoal production and logging, supplemented by some agriculture, cattle raising, and fishing. The wooden pier on the Rezovo River was used to transport wood and charcoal. Although the population has progressively dropped, Rezovo remains a famous beach resort and tourist destination due to its southeasternmost position. Until recently, it was considered part of the border zone, with visitors subject to inspection by Border Police authorities. Rezovo became the contiguous EU’s southeasternmost point with Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union on 1 January 2007. On 2 January 2007, municipal mayor Petko Arnaudov raised the European flag beside the national and municipal flags in the settlement, and dubbed the roadway beginning at the Bulgarian border sign the Europe Alley.