Shumen is the tenth largest city in Bulgaria and lies within a cluster of hills, northern outliers of the eastern Balkans, which curve around it on the west and south in the shape of a horseshoe. The first records of Shumen date back to the Chalcolithic. Excavations by Raphael Popov in 1907 founded the settlement mound Kodzadermen, inhabited in the Middle and Late Chalcolithic.

The Shumen Fortress, partially restored after being destroyed by the Ottomans, is an important historical monument of the medieval Bulgarian Empire. The Regional Historical Museum, which is a successor of the Archaeological Society created in Shumen in 1904 by Rafail Popov. The religious buildings in the city include the Eastern Orthodox Holy Three Saints Cathedral and Holy Ascension Basilica, as well as the Sherif Halil Pasha mosque (also known as the Tombul Mosque), the largest mosque in Bulgaria and one of the largest in the Balkans.