Situated midway between Shumen and Ruse, RAZGRAD sprawls messily around the banks of the Beli Lom. Since the Liberation in March 1878, the narrow lanes and artisans' stalls that characterized the town during Ottoman times have gradually succumbed to modern urban planning. Apart from a restored Varosh quarter north of the river, where a succession of whitewashed National Revival-style houses provide homes for various artists' and writers' unions, Razgrad remains fairly lacklustre, largely because its one great attraction - the seventeenth-century Ibrahim Pasha mosque - looks set to remain closed for renovation for many years to come. An imposing block of heavy masonry topped by a graceful dome and tapering minaret, it's a lasting tribute to the skills of its Albanian and Bulgarian builders - and to the Turkish governor Ibrahim, who commissioned it in 1614.

Razgrad's only other sight, lying east of town on the Shumen road, just beyond a large pharmaceutical factory, is the remains of Abritus , the fortified Roman town that guarded the road between the Danube and Odessos (now Varna) on the Black Sea. Part of the walls that once surrounded the town (originally standing 12-15 metres high) can be seen by the roadside, while near the site of the town's eastern gate stand the foundations of the so-called Peristyle building , a 23-room complex grouped around a columned courtyard, once used by shopkeepers and artisans. A small, irregularly open museum at the site displays pottery fragments and grave inscriptions, plus a collection of bronze tablets depicting the variety of deities - ranging from familiar Graeco-Roman figures such as Zeus and Hera to more exotic rider-gods and mother goddesses from the Middle East - worshipped by the cosmopolitan bunch of troops used to garrison the area. The museum's most valuable treasure - a gold drinking cup in the form of a winged horse - is too valuable to be on open display, and remains locked in a strong-room.