Interactive Atlas
Map of the Second Bulgarian Empire
How the empire's borders rose and fell · 1185–1396
Trace the shifting borders of medieval Bulgaria across nine dated snapshots — from the 1185 uprising that restored the empire, through its greatest extent under Ivan Asen II, to fragmentation and the Ottoman conquest. Each map draws a single historical layer alongside its neighbours.
Nine snapshots
Restoration of the Empire
The 1185 uprising of the brothers Asen and Peter restores Bulgarian statehood. By 1186 a realm forms around Tarnovo in the north-east, while Byzantium still holds most of the Balkans and Serbia rises under Nemanja.
2 regions
Kaloyan's Ascendancy
Tsar Kaloyan crushes the Latins at Adrianople (1205) after the Fourth Crusade replaced Byzantium with the Latin Empire in Constantinople. Bulgaria expands across Thrace and Macedonia; the Greek states of Nicaea and Epirus emerge.
9 regions
Apogee under Ivan Asen II
After the victory at Klokotnitsa (1230) Ivan Asen II destroys the Epirote state and dominates the Balkans from the Adriatic toward the Aegean, overshadowing the Latin Empire and the Greek successor states.
12 regions
Byzantine Restoration
Nicaea recaptures Constantinople (1261), restoring the Byzantine Empire under Michael VIII Palaiologos. Weakened by Mongol pressure, Bulgaria contracts while Serbia and Hungary press its borders.
6 regions
Recovery under Theodore Svetoslav
Theodore Svetoslav stabilises Bulgaria, defeats the Mongols and recovers the Black Sea coast. Serbia under Milutin pushes south into Macedonia; Byzantium holds the south.
6 regions
Ivan Alexander and the Rise of Serbia
Ivan Alexander begins his long reign (1331) and restores Bulgarian fortunes, while Stefan Dušan's Serbia rises to dominate the central Balkans. Byzantium is riven by civil war.
6 regions
Fragmentation and Division
Stefan Dušan dies (1355) and his Serbian empire fragments; Bulgaria splits into the tsardoms of Tarnovo and Vidin and the Dobruja despotate. The Ottomans cross into Europe.
6 regions
The Battle of the Maritsa
The Ottoman victory on the Maritsa (1371) shatters Balkan resistance and reduces the Bulgarian and Serbian rulers to vassalage. Bulgaria remains divided between Tarnovo and Vidin.
4 regions
Ottoman Conquest
Tarnovo falls in 1393 and Vidin in 1396; the Crusade of Nicopolis (1396) fails. By 1396 the Bulgarian lands are absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, ending medieval Bulgarian statehood.
The arc of the empire
When the brothers Asen and Peter rose against Byzantine rule in 1185, the restored empire held little more than the lands around its capital, Tarnovo. Within two decades Kaloyan had shattered the Latin Crusaders at Adrianople and pushed Bulgarian power south and west across the Balkans.
The empire reached its greatest extent after 1230, when Ivan Asen II routed the Epirote state at Klokotnitsa and ruled from the Black Sea to the Adriatic approaches, styling himself "Tsar of the Bulgarians and Greeks." The maps of 1205 and 1230 show that surge; the map of 1261 shows how quickly Mongol raids and dynastic strife undid it.
The fourteenth century brought a partial recovery under Theodore Svetoslav and a cultural flourishing under Ivan Alexander, but also fragmentation: by 1355 the realm had split into the tsardoms of Tarnovo, Vidin and Dobruja. The Ottoman victory on the Maritsa in 1371 sealed their fate, and with the fall of Tarnovo in 1393 and Vidin in 1396 the medieval Bulgarian state came to an end.