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There are times in summer when Sofia no longer feels like a national capital. With most of its citizens taking a long holiday (or at least behaving as if they are), the city ceases to be the centre around which everything in Bulgarian society and culture revolves. Most curiously, Sofia has never got used to its role as a serious summer tourist destination, allowing Bulgaria’s coastal and mountain resorts to bask in the holiday limelight instead. While other European capitals organize outdoor events, street festivals and headline-grabbing art exhibitions in order to grab their share of the tourist-industry pie, Sofia pulls down the shutters and hangs an “out to lunch” sign in the window. With the entire city wearing an apologetic, “all-my-friends-have-gone-to-the-seaside-and-I’m-left-here–alone” kind of face, bemused visitors are handed directions to the nearest beach 400km to the east.

What the locals often forget to tell you is that Sofia is actually a vivacious, thrilling, and at times gorgeously sensual place in which to spend the summer. The city is extraordinarily rich in its choice of gardens, parks, outdoor bars, and open-air swimming opportunities. However it is at nightfall that Sofia’s understated south-European glamour makes its presence felt, with dressed-up evening strollers swooping bat-like through the city’s dusk-darkened streets, and the hubbub of outdoor cafes echoing off the walls of downtown buildings.