At a point roughly midway between Bourgas and Varna, the E-87 highway emerges from the hilly wooded terrain into a brief open coastal stretch around Obzor. Despite the town`s convenient location and six-kilometer long sandy beach (the largest between Golden Sands and Sunny Beach), this remarkably pleasant spot is surprisingly uncrowded even during peak season. The origins of the town, which the ancient Greeks knew as Heliopolis ("town of the sun"), can be seen in the small park which is lined with columns and statuary fragments from a Roman temple to Jupiter which once graced the spot. The Romans also built a fortress in the vicinity to protect their sea trading routes between Constantinople and the Danube. Medieval Bulgarians constructed their own Kozyak fortress nearby. Obzor is a major rest stop for buses and vans from Bourgas and Varna that regularly ply the north-south coastal highway, so getting there from either direction is not a problem.