Kyustendil Cherry Festival

Kyustendil, long known as Bulgaria's fruit garden and the country's main sweet-cherry producing region, holds an end-of-June exhibition-market where growers show more than a hundred cherry varieties, sell fresh fruit and cherry products, and run cooking demonstrations and tasting competitions. A folklore program of regional dance and song runs alongside the stalls, and the festival, organized annually since 2008 with the local Institute of Agriculture, stays close to its farming roots.

Kyustendil calls itself Bulgaria's fruit garden, a nickname that dates back to 1896 when the town hosted the country's first national fruit-growing exhibition, and by late June the claim is easy to see: the surrounding region grows more sweet cherries than anywhere else in Bulgaria, and the harvest gets its own annual festival.