October 2019
Sofia is our last European city on this trip and like everything else in Bulgaria if you scratch the surface you find Roman history - and lots of it. This is particularly true when excavations started for an extension to the Serdica metro station. A huge area was excavated and 4m deep ruins were uncovered. These are now viewable by the public with a large section open air and an equally large section under pavements with some quite neat skylights.
The complex excavated included eights streets, a medieval Christian basilica, thermae, six large buildings, mosaics, baths, toilets, water supply and sewage system.
High above the Serdica metro station is the statue of Sveta (Saint) Sophia - far nicer than the one of Lenin that it replaced.
Within the confines of the Presidency building is the Church of Saint George (an early Christian red brick rotunda) that is considered the oldest building in Sofia. The original building dates back the the 4th century when constructed by Romans (and was probably built on top of a preexisting pagan site), but what it's really famous for are the existing 12th-, 13th- and 14th-century frescoes inside the central dome.
Purely by chance our stay in Sofia was on the first Wednesday of the month which is when the changing of the Palace guards in front of the Presidency is done with full pomp and ceremony accompanied by a couple of drummers and a trumpeter. However think somebody should really tell them that the opening bars of the music they played sounds like a direct rip of the Star Trek theme music (the presence of heavily armed guards meant sniggering wasn't really an option).
The two big churches that are on the must see list are Saint Sofia and the Cathedral Saint Aleksandar Nevski.
The Saint Sofia is a nice enough church and was built on top of earlier church's dating back the the 4th century. However it's the crypts underneath it that we found fascinating as down there were ancient tombs and mosaics.
After Sophia we were pretty much churched out for the day so Cathedral Saint Aleksandar Nevski only got a quick look see.
As with most cities in Bulgaria there is a Russian monument dedicated to the liberation of Bulgaria by Russia and Sofia is no exception. Given that this is a university town the monument is periodically defaced - but in an interesting way. Sadly untouched when we were there but the second image will give you an idea of the sort of graffiti that is applied.
The shining light of Russia doing over Nazi Germany.
With a half day to spare we headed out to Boyana Church as it's UNESCO listed and sounded interesting. The Boyana Church was built in three stages: in the late 10th to early 11th, the mid-13th, and the mid-19th centuries. What is really amazing though are the frescoes inside. Large chunks of the original structure still exists and on one wall there are the original 10th century frescoed plaster (sadly fresco was unviewable as plaster was scarified) and overlaid with 11th century frescoed plaster which in turn was overlaid with 13th century frescoed plaster.
Unfortunately give then age of the frescoes taking of photoes was prohibited and visits were limited to ten minutes
Prior to leaving we visited, a small communist-era themed restaurant in Sophia where we had a tasty lunch but decided that one dish, whilst interesting, was not for us.
From Eastern Europe ournext stop is the middle east - Jordan.
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