Sofia: the back story

About Sofia: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Sofia Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Few capitals wear their history as openly as Sofia. Roman streets lie beneath the metro, a 4th-century church stands in a hotel courtyard, and a cathedral, a mosque and a synagogue face each other within a few minutes’ walk.

Serdica

The Thracian Serdi tribe settled here beside the hot springs, and the Romans built Serdica, a prosperous city of walls, baths and an amphitheatre. Emperor Constantine is said to have called it “my Rome”. Today the Ancient Serdica Complex lets you walk along its streets in the open, beneath the Largo, and the Rotunda of St George still stands from the 4th century.

The city of St Sofia

In the 6th century the great brick basilica of St Sofia was built over an older Christian cemetery, and in the 14th century the city took its name from it. Sofia, “wisdom” in Greek, has kept it ever since. The Boyana Church on the edge of the city holds medieval frescoes of 1259 that are among the treasures of European art.

In Sofia, a Roman street, a medieval church and a modern metro station can share the same few square metres.

Ottoman Sofia

For nearly five centuries Sofia was an Ottoman town of markets, baths and mosques. The Banya Bashi Mosque, built in 1566 beside the hot springs, still calls the faithful to prayer, and the old Great Mosque now houses the National Archaeological Museum.

The new capital

After 1878 Sofia became the capital of a new Bulgarian state, and it grew fast: the National Theatre, the Central Mineral Baths, the Central Market Hall and the great Alexander Nevsky Cathedral all date from the decades around 1900. In the 1950s, the Largo ensemble was built in the heart of the city.

Sofia today

Today Sofia is a lively, young capital, with a tech scene, specialty coffee, craft beer and art spaces, and the green wall of Vitosha Mountain rising behind it. You can walk from a Roman street to a café terrace in a minute, and from the city to the mountain in half an hour.

Our advice: start at the Largo and the Serdica complex, walk to the Rotunda, the Church of St Sofia and Alexander Nevsky, then fill a bottle of warm mineral water at the fountains by the Central Mineral Baths, as Sofians have done for centuries.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Sofia: the back story before you go.