With its diverse springs, excellent climate and leafy parks,
VELINGRAD
is one of Bulgaria's most popular spa towns, although those not intent on taking a cure will find little else to do here. It consists of three former Pomak villages originally named Kamenitsa, Lādzhene and Chepino - lumped together in 1948 and renamed after local partisan heroine Vela Peeva. Both the train and bus stations are a few minutes' walk east of the modern centre, which in turn lies just to the east of
Lādzhene
, where Velingrad's oldest baths, the
Velyova banya
(founded in the sixteenth century, although the buildings are modern), stand in a park beside the Yundola road. Just to the north of the centre is
Kamenitsa
, fringed by wooded parks that harbour the town's open-air baths, most of the modern spa facilities, and a small Ottoman-period
hammam
, the
Kremāchna banya
or "Flint Baths".
Velingrad's third cluster of baths lies 2km south of the centre in the
Chepino
quarter (bus #1 from the centre), where mineral water flows free from taps in the streets. Above Chepino to the south lies the Kleptuza spring, waters from which flow down to the
Kleptuza lake
, just east of Chepino: with pedalos, rowing boats and lakeside walkways, this is the most popular of Velingrad's resort areas.