This city is 7,000 years old, and the earliest traces of human life are from the fifth millennium BC. Traces of Thracian culture have been found on Trapezitsa Hill, dating from the first half of the third millennium. Two of the tribes of - uzditsens and krobizi, for centuries inhabiting the Veliko Tarnovo region, creating a significant material and spiritual culture. Their traces are lost only in the first century of the new era, when the Roman conquerors founded the province of Moesia (in 46 AD) and built new centers of culture in the Veliko Tarnovo region, outside the large Thracian settlement; but in the early Byzantine era (from the 5th to the first half of the 7th century) the Tsarevets hill again became a fortified settlement, where intensive life flourished. In the 7th century there was a large Slavic-Bulgarian settlement here, which in the 12th century was already a fortified town, a significant economic, cultural and military center.

For two hundred and eight years Veliko Tarnovo has been the Bulgarian capital. In two centuries of the thirteen-century history of the Bulgarian state, the city connects its destiny with the destiny of Bulgaria, to remain forever a symbol of its culture, a symbol of its international politics, a symbol of its eternity.