They are almost certainly memorial notices, announcing/commemorating the death of a loved one.

They tend to be posted on various 'anniversaries' of the death, e.g. 40 days or 'x' years.

No it's not peculiar to Nesebar, the notices are posted not just in towns/cities but in villages as well - often outside the house of the deceased person and on municipal notice boards.

Baldur

It's a really nice custom. St Vlas has lots on the trees every year.
Going back around the same dates each year, you get used to seeing the same ones.

They are part of the place, part of what makes it special.

Thanks for your replies. So it's rather like the "In Memoriam" column in a local newspaper but a bit more personal. I see now why there are so many. I wonder if they do this in any other countries?

IvanM wrote:

Thanks for your replies. So it's rather like the "In Memoriam" column in a local newspaper but a bit more personal. I see now why there are so many. I wonder if they do this in any other countries?

The celebration of the lives of the deceased is not restricted to the display of the notices.

I was invited as a guest to the home of a friend's widowed mother in a village near Devnya a couple of years ago, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his father's death.

I was the only Westerner among a dozen or so elderly Bulgarian 'babas' (grandmothers), who were dressed from head to toe in black, along with my friend and his brother. The tables were groaning with food, including bread, chicken, fish, rice, sarmi, etc., as well as massive portions of home-made baklava, which altogether must have cost his mother nearly a month's pension.

After all being encouraged to eat (and eat - I was almost force-fed baklava!) we subsequently set out, first posting one of the notices outside the house then another outside the village hall; we finally made our way up to the windswept village cemetery and renewed the notice on the grave, where the widow and close friends paid their remembrance around the grave for several minutes.