Plovdiv Province Plovdiv Province Plovdiv Province (: "Oblast Plovdiv", former name Plovdiv okrug) is a province in central southern Bulgaria. It comprises 18 municipalities (общини, "obshtini", sing. общинa, "obshtina") on a territory of 5,972.9 km² with a population, as of February 2011, of 683,027 inhabitants. The province is named after its administrative and industrial centre — the city of Plovdiv. Plovdiv Province includes parts of the Upper Thracian Plain, the Rhodopes, Sredna Gora, the Sub-Balkan valleys and Stara Planina, including its highest peak, Botev (2,376m). The main rivers in the province are Maritsa, Stryama, Pyasachnik. There are numerous dams, the most important
Plovdiv institution outside the United States, the American College of Sofia, was founded in Plovdiv in 1860 and later moved to Sofia. On 5 September 2014, Plovdiv was selected as the Bulgarian host of the European Capital of Culture 2019. This happened with the help of the Municipal Foundation "Plovdiv 2019″, a non-government organization, which was established in 2011 by Plovdiv's City Council whose main objectives were to develop and to prepare Plovdiv's bid book for European Capital of Culture in 2019. Plovdiv was given various names throughout its long history. The Odrysian capital "Odryssa" () is suggested to have been