Situated in the verdant foothills of the Sredna Gora, HISAR (sometimes written as "Hisarya"), 55km east of Panagyurishte, was one of the great watering-holes of antiquity, and the local bottled mineral water is still sold across the country. It was the Romans who founded the spa, building marble baths, aqueducts, temples and - after raids by the Goths in 251 - fortifications to protect the town, which they called Augusta. Subsequently an episcopal seat, it was devastated by Crusaders despite their appreciation of this "fair town", 150 years before its conquest by the Turks, who restored the baths in the sixteenth century and renamed the place Hisar ("the fortress"). Developed as a health resort for factory workers in Communist times, Hisar has fallen on hard times since the democratic changes of the early 1990s, and the elegant tranquility once offered by its (now overgrown) parks and flowerbeds is long gone.