Botanic garden in Balchik

The Balchik Palace is located in the Bulgarian Black Sea town and resort Balchik, Southern Dobrudzha. It was constructed between 1926 and 1937, during the Romanian rule of the region to serve as summer residence to Queen Marie of Romania. The palace complex consists of a number of residential villas, a smoking hall, a wine cellar, a power station, a monastery, a holy spring, a chapel and many other buildings, as well as most notably a park that is today a state-run botanical garden.

The Balchik Botanical Garden was established at the place of the palace's park in 1955, after the return of Southern Dobrudzha to Bulgaria with the Treaty of Craiova. It has an area of 65,000 m? and accommodates 2000 plant species belonging to 85 families and 200 genera. One of the garden's main attractions is the collection of large-sized cactus species arranged outdoors on 1000 m2, the second of its kind in Europe after the one in Monaco.