Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo: Bus, Train or Car, and the One I Take

Veliko Tarnovo was Bulgaria's capital for more than 200 years, and it sits about 220 km north-east of Sofia on a gorge of the Yantra river. It's the trip I push hardest on friends with a few days to spare. Here's how I get there: the coach I take and its times, the train with its change, the drive, the route from the airport and the timings that make it a night away.

How to get from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo: the quick answer

Take the coach. It leaves from beside Sofia Central Railway Station, needs no change and costs €14.50 on most departures, and with 17 a day you can pick your hour. The train is slower and drops you below the town, and driving only wins if you want the car for the countryside afterwards.

It's the same order I use for getting around Bulgaria on most routes: the coach between towns, the train when the fare or the scenery wins, and a hire car for monasteries and mountain villages.

Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo by bus

Three companies share the route: Group Plus (Груп Плюс), Union Ivkoni (Юнион Ивкони) and Biomet (Глобал Биомет). All of them leave from Sofia Central Bus Station (Централна автогара), at 100 Knyaginya Maria Luiza Boulevard, next to the Central Railway Station north of the centre.

Every coach on the list stops at Veliko Tarnovo on its way somewhere else: Varna, Dobrich, Kavarna, Shumen or Razgrad. They leave from sectors 6, 7, 8 and 10, and the bus station's timetable gives the sector for each departure.

Coach times from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo

This is the full list on Sofia Central Bus Station's Veliko Tarnovo timetable, 17 departures a day. The arrival times are the bus station's own estimates, and some rows give none.

The quickest daytime coaches, the 11:00, the 15:30 and the 16:00 Union Ivkoni, take about 3 hours 15 minutes. The 10:30 Union Ivkoni is the slow one at about 4 hours 20 minutes, so I skip it. For a Friday after work, the 16:00 and 17:00 get you in for a late dinner in the old town.

Buying a coach ticket in Sofia

Each company has its own window inside the bus station, and I buy there on the day for a midweek trip. For a Friday evening or a Sunday afternoon, I book a day or two ahead on the bus station's website, which sells seats on these coaches until 6 hours before departure. Fares are in euros, so a price you find quoted in leva is out of date since Bulgaria switched to the euro on 1 January 2026.

The current timetable runs to 31 December 2026 and marks the days of the week each coach runs, so I check my date the day before.

Where the coach stops in Veliko Tarnovo

Biomet's coaches mostly stop at the South bus station, Автогара Юг (Avtogara Yug). The Group Plus and Union Ivkoni rows list only "Veliko Tarnovo", so ask at the window where yours stops. With a case, I take a taxi from the coach to my guesthouse in the old town and save my legs for Tsarevets.

Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo by train

There's no direct train. Trains on the Sofia to Varna line stop at Gorna Oryahovitsa, the railway junction for Veliko Tarnovo, and you change there onto a local train for the short hop into town.

That last leg is about 15 minutes: the train from Bucharest, for one, leaves Gorna Oryahovitsa at 17:35 and reaches Veliko Tarnovo at 17:50. Times and fares from Sofia change with the timetable, so I look up the day on the BDZ timetable and buy on BDZ's ticket site or at the windows in Sofia Central Railway Station.

Veliko Tarnovo's station sits at the foot of the hills the town is built on. It's about a 25-minute walk up to the centre, and with a bag I take a taxi.

The train suits you if you love trains, hold a rail pass or are already riding Bulgaria's trains round the country. For everyone else the coach is quicker and needs no change.

Driving from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo

It's about 220 km and about 3 hours without stops. The route runs north-east out of Sofia onto the Hemus motorway (A2) for about 90 km, leaves at exit 89, then follows road 4 for the last 117 km or so into Veliko Tarnovo.

A car makes sense if you want the countryside around Veliko Tarnovo, such as Arbanasi on the plateau above town or the Monastery of the Transfiguration about 7 km north. For the town alone I'd leave it behind, because the old streets are steep and narrow and everything I want to see is on foot.

Keep dipped headlights on all day, all year, as Bulgarian law requires, and expect on-the-spot fines from the traffic police for breaking the rules.

Sofia Airport to Veliko Tarnovo

From the airport I head straight for the Central Bus Station. From Terminal 2, take the M4 metro to Serdika, change onto M2 towards Obelya and ride 2 stops to Central Railway Station, with the bus station next door. One contactless tap of €0.80 covers it, because the fare includes 30 minutes of free changes.

Terminal 1 has no metro station, so from there I take bus 84 or the free airport shuttle across to Terminal 2 first. With heavy bags, a metered taxi from the official desk in arrivals to the Central Bus Station costs about €14 to €15.

The last metro leaves the airport at 23:38 on weekdays and 23:46 at weekends and on bank holidays. Flights from the UK land at Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, so check yours before you plan the metro.

Day trip or one night in Veliko Tarnovo?

One night, every time. The first daytime coach leaves Sofia at 06:30 and gets in at about 10:00, so a day trip means about 7 hours on coaches for a few hours in town, and you miss the old town in the evening, after the day visitors have gone.

A night lets you arrive at lunchtime, do the fortress in the late afternoon and keep the old town for the next morning. Of all the day trips from Sofia I write about, this is the one I'd turn into an overnight first.

A second night buys you Veliko Tarnovo's slower sights, such as the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs by the river and the painted Church of the Nativity in Arbanasi.

Tsarevets, the fortress hill

Tsarevets fills a loop of the Yantra with its walls, gates and the Patriarchal Cathedral on top. It was the heart of the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire from 1185 until the Ottomans took the city in 1393, and Bulgaria's medieval history feels a lot more real from its walls.

I go in the late afternoon, when the summer heat has eased and the light turns gold on the walls. There's no cafe inside, so I carry water, and a hat in summer.

You can buy your Tsarevets ticket at the gate or online through the Regional Museum of History, which runs the site. The family ticket covers two parents and up to three children aged 7 to 18.

Samovodska Charshiya and Trapezitsa on day two

Samovodska Charshiya is the old craft street, a cobbled lane of workshops selling pottery, woven scarves and embroidery, and I walk it first thing on my second morning.

Trapezitsa is the second fortified hill, across the river from Tsarevets. It's about a 30-minute walk from the centre, or a ride up on the funicular from the visitor centre, and from the top you see Tsarevets across the river, its walls and cathedral in one view.

I ride the funicular up and walk down, then have lunch in the old town before the coach.

Going on from Veliko Tarnovo

Veliko Tarnovo sits in the middle of the country, so I fit it into a loop. Most of the coaches you came on carry on to Varna, and Gorna Oryahovitsa is on the railway to Varna too, which makes the Black Sea coast the obvious next stop in summer.

Plovdiv is about 3 hours away on a direct bus, so a week in Bulgaria can run Sofia, Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo and back to Sofia without a car. On that loop I give Plovdiv's Old Town two nights, Veliko Tarnovo two more, and take the coach home to Sofia at the end.

If you're coming from Romania, the train from Bucharest crosses the Danube at Ruse and reaches Veliko Tarnovo about 7 hours later, which makes the town a good first night in Bulgaria. Going the other way, Sofia to Bucharest is about 10 hours on the daily train or about 6.5 hours by coach.