Smolyan () is a town and ski resort in the south of Bulgaria near the border with Greece. It is the administrative and industrial centre of the Smolyan Province. The town is built along the narrow valley of the Cherna ('black') and the Byala ('white') river in the central Rhodope Mountains, making it the longest city in Bulgaria. It is located at the foot of the mountain's highest peak Golyam Perelik (2191 m).Popular ski resorts of Pamporovo and Chepelare lie in the vicinity. As of June 2022 the town has a population of 30 689 inhabitants. Name The name of the town comes from the local Slavic tribe of the Smolyani, the name of whom is probably cognate to the Slavic word smola ("resin"). History According to archaeological evidence, the area around Smolyan was first settled in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. In the Middle Ages it acquired its name from the Slavic tribe, the Smolyani, who settled in the region in the 7th century. During the Middle Ages, it was ruled by the Part of the Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires. For a while during the 14th century it came under the control of the Bulgarian feudal lord Momchil, alongside the whole Rhodope mountains, before eventually being subjugated by the Ottoman Empire. Smolyan remained under Ottoman rule for five centuries, a township of the Ottoman Sanjak of Gümülcine in the Adrianople Vilayet between 1867 and 1912. The area was liberated by the 21st Sredna Gora Regiment led by Vladimir Serafimov in 1912, during the First Balkan War. The modern town of Smolyan was formed by the merger of three existing villages — Ustovo, Raykovo and Ezerovo — in 1960. Population The population of Smolyan just after World War II was about 5,000. Since then, it started growing decade by decade, mostly because of the migrants from the rural areas and the surrounding smaller towns, reaching its peak in the beginning of the 1990s, exceeding 34,000. Ethnic linguistic and religious composition According to the latest 2011 census data, the individuals declared their ethnic identity were distributed as follows: Bulgarians: 25,045 (97.0%) Roma: 258 (1.0%) Turks: 153 (0.6%) Others: 120 (0.5%) Indefinable: 248 (1.0%) Undeclared: 4,818 (15.7%) Total: 30,642 In Smolyan Municipality 32708 declared as Bulgarians, 301 as Roma and 170 as Turks and 9,000 did not declare their ethnic group. Religion In 1912, Aha Celebi said that 8,252 families already live, including