TEMPLES AND ARTS

SOFIA, BULGARIA - JULY 2006


"ROTUNDA - The Church of St George Rotunda, located behind the Sheraton Hotel quite close to the remains of the Roman road and of the ancient town of Serdica, is a 4th century Christian red brick church, considered to be the oldest building in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria"


"ROTUNDA'S INTERIOR is famous for its 10th-14th century frescoes. Three layers of frescoes have been discovered in the 20th century, as they had been painted over during the Ottoman period, when the building was used as a mosque. The earliest frescoes date back to the tenth century"


"ST. NEDELYA CHURCH, probably built in the 10th century, is a cathedral of the bishopric of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church. A unique church was reconstructed between 1927 and 1933, after a bomb destroyed most of its original frame in 1925"



"ST. NEDELYA'S INTERIOR is wonderful. The gilt iconostasis that survived the bomb attack returned to the church in 1933 and the mural decoration was done by a team led by Nikolay Rostovtsev between 1971 and 1973"


"ST. PETKA SAMARDIJIISKA (St. Petka of the Saddlers), partially dug into the ground, features a semi-cylindrical vault, a hemispherical apse, and a crypt. The walls are one meter thick and made from brick and stone"


"ST. PETKA'S INTERIOR is known for its mural paintings from the 14th, 15th, 17th and 19th century depicting biblical scenes"



"THE SYNAGOGUE is the third largest in Europe (accommodating 1300 worshippers), next to the synagogues in Budapest and Amsterdam. Designed in a Spanish-Moorish style, the temple looks like the Vienna synagogue"


"MOSQUE - The Banya Bashi Mosque is one of the oldest mosques in Europe, having been completed in 1576. Its name means many baths, and is actually built over a natural thermal spa"



"THE BOYANA CHURCH is included in the UNESCO Heritage List. Located on the outskirts of Sofia, it consists of three buildings: the Eastern Church built in the 10th century; a second two storey building erected next to it; and a third church, built at the beginning of the 19th century. The frescoes in this second church, painted in 1259, make it one of the most important collections of medieval paintings. Actually, there are more than 700 fresco paintings there"



"RUSSIANS - The monuments from the socialist years are impressive and interesting as a detail of the country’s past. The most relevant are the Monument to the Soviet Army and the Monument to Freedom"



"THE NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM, housed in the stately Boyana Residence, is Bulgaria's largest museum. The museum currently stores and owns over 650,000 objects connected to archaeology, fine arts, history and ethnography, exhibiting about 10% of all"



"FRESCOES AND ICONOSTASES are some of the most important pieces of the Museum"


"THE TREASURE OF THE THRACIAN is probably the most impressive of the Museum pieces"

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