Bulgaria – Sofia highlights

There’s nothing quite like a tour of a city to get one’s orientation, so we kicked off our first day in Sofia, not via a Big Bus Tour this time as the town and roads are not big enough. Instead there is a much publicised free walking tour. Past experience has shown that the free tours are often not up to much, so our expectations were not over ambitious. However, this popular two hour tour was very good.

We were taken around all the main sites – outside, not inside as there would not be enough time. We started at the Palace of Justice which makes a good meeting point. It has a central positioning and two large lion statues outside which cannot be missed. The grand building was constructed between 1929-1940 with the purpose of having in one site all the courts of the capital, which previously had been widely spread. Today it is considered to be a ‘temple of justice’.

Lion outside the Palace of Justice, a favourite meeting point

We then headed past an archeological dig, unfortunately nobody was working on the site at the time. What we later discovered from a visit to the Sofia History Museum (housed within the thermal baths mentioned in an earlier post) was that this is just one of many archaeological digs in and around Sofia. As construction extends through the city with new gas pipes, Metro extensions and other major works, many ancient sites are being uncovered and with them discoveries of burials, building techniques, pottery, jewellery, and in some cases coin hoards. One wonders what they might discover in the future.

Ancient belt buckle. It would be attractive even today

There were churches aplenty on this walking tour including the very large Bulgarian Orthodox Alexander Nevski Cathedral. When it was completed in 1912 it was the tallest Orthodox Church in the Balkans at 53 metres high, but in 1984 the Serbian Cathedral of St Sava in Beograd surpassed it at more than 70 metres high.

Alexander Nevski Cathedral

The Sofia cathedral is capable of housing 5,000 people. Its belfry has 12 bells weighing 23 tons in total. We were told these were never rung at the same time as it would shatter the eardrums of many. The dark cathedral interior is heavily decorated with icons and sculpture, with works in Italian marble and Brazilian onyx.

Cathedral interior

Another church, Sveta Nedelya, had a tragic history. It had a bomb attack in 1925 during the funeral of General Konstantinos Georgiev who had been killed in an earlier communist attack. The church bombing was carried out by the Bulgarian Communist Party. Its intended target was Tsar Boris III. He survived but 150 people, mainly from the political and military elite, were killed and hundreds were injured.

A church with a tragic history

A further, rather attractive, church on the tour was the Rotunda St George built in the 4th century. It is considered to be the oldest building in Sofia and now belongs to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Three layers of frescoes have been discovered inside dating back to the 10th century. Today the building is dwarfed by the surrounding Communist-built offices (below).

The Ivan Vazov national theatre, another stop along our walk
Changing of the guard at the President’s residence, a further site to see on the hour

Two other places our tour guide Milko recommended we take some time to visit were the Red Flat, and Sofia History Museum. We took his advice.

The Red Flat is an immersive ‘museum’. It is a one bedroom flat near the centre of Sofia which is set out as it would have been in Communist times. In fact it is quite hard to find. Tickets are purchased at a local shop, the shopkeeper instructing visitors to pass along a nearby street and ring a doorbell with a red sticker to gain access.

The flat interior was better furnished than one might expect. So many of the contents were familiar with our upbringing and that of our parents such as the Russian-made film camera, a chopper bike, photo albums with black and white images and a transistor radio.

The sitting room

What was surprising was the well-equipped kitchen with front-loading washing machine. I am sure many homes in the UK would not have had this luxury. To accompany our self-guided tour of the flat we had an audio recording of 48 ‘stops’ around the interior. It was suggested upon entry that we really did immerse ourselves in the experience, opening cupboards, sitting on the seats, reading the magazines. We didn’t take advantage by lying on the beds.

All mod cons in the kitchen

Within the well laid out Sofia History Museum with its labelling in Bulgarian and English was a temporary exhibition of 40 gardens in and around the capital. Such detail about gardens was most unusual for a museum anywhere in the world. It took each garden in turn via a poster display and listed its landscapes and designers, plantings, sources of some of its rarer plants, and showed architectural plans with some photographs of the resulting structures. Some of the gardens were large, others were green spaces within the city.

Something that also caught my eye was in a garden in the town centre where they had a display of the works of female architects in Bulgaria during the 20th and 21st centuries. This was pleasing to see and the displayed architects were numerous. Information highlighted the difficulties women faced in the profession and how some investors were reluctant to place projects with female architects. However, in time their skills, aesthetic views and achievements were recognised, and some were also appointed to high positions on architectural courses in universities.

So rather than not enough to do in Sofia as my initial thoughts, the walking tour and the visit to the museum proved there is lots to do in the capital to occupy days if not weeks.

Now the excitement begins. We have met our four fellow travellers and we leave in the morning for Troyan after having an initiation into driving the Trabies. But one thing to point out. My map shown in the prologue had our direction wrong. Instead of travelling anti-clockwise we are journeying clockwise. I had asked the smooth-talking Neil if he would change direction in order to make my map correct and not confuse my following friends, but it is not to be. So off to Troyan it is.

Copyright: words and pictures Sue Barnard 2022