Further Rumelia, around Beroia

Heart of Bulgaria:

Beroia is a "big" city, nearly 20 thousand people ... which seems a lot for a D&D world, but we visit little burghs like this all the time our world and think nothing of them.  Most of us living in actually big cities (Calgary has more than a million) can hardly imagine living in backward place the size of Beroia.

The Goths won here against the Romans in the 4th century AD.  At the end of the 6th century, "Beroe" was destroyed but rebuilt, under the name of Veroia.  The Byzantines named it Zagore, and in the 10th century when it came under the control of the Bulgarians, it was renamed Borui.  In 1371, it fell under the Ottomans, where it remained until the time of my game world.  Thus I had a number of names to go with, but chose "Beroia," the original Thracian name.  The present city is Stara Zagora.

Cities like this are naturally cosmopolitan, given that each generation has created a new tradition that's followed in some quarter of the city, as leftover Greeks, Italians, Goths, Byzantines and Bulgarians are impressed upon by the latecomer Ottomans.  A DM can make use of this to create a vibrancy in some cities that doesn't exist in other places that haven't changed hands, or culture, in a thousand years.  Each part of the city is a faction, trying to hold onto its past while sustaining it's identity in a steady flow of outsiders and alternate beliefs.  Tapping into this can help the players insert themselves into the world, as they realise that they, too, are outsiders, with a strange, modern viewpoint on everything.