Zhitnitsa, Plovdiv Province Zhitnitsa, Plovdiv Province Zhitnitsa (, "granary") is a village in central southern Bulgaria, part of Kaloyanovo Municipality, Plovdiv Province. Zhitnitsa is mostly inhabited by Roman Catholic Bulgarians, descendants of medieval Paulicians. It lies north of Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second city, and from the municipal centre Kaloyanovo. Zhitnitsa was founded no later than 1646, during the Ottoman rule of Bulgaria, as a Turkish-owned farm. The farm was manned and worked by Bulgarian Paulicians from Sopot and Kalabrovo, who settled in the vicinity and established the village. According to an 18th-century report by papal missionary Nikola Radovani, the village had 54 houses inhabited
Plovdiv is the second or the third-largest cosmopolitan city inhabited by Bulgarians, after Sofia and possibly Varna. According to the 2001 census, out of a population of 338,224 inhabitants, the Bulgarians numbered 302,858 (90%). Stolipinovo in Plovdiv is the largest Roma neighbourhood in the Balkans, having a population of around 20,000 alone; further Roma ghettos are Hadji Hassan Mahala and Sheker Mahala. Therefore, the census number is a deflation of the number of Roma people, and they are most likely the second-largest group after the Bulgarians, most of all because the Muslim Roma in Plovdiv claim to be of Turkish ethnicity