Basilica of the Holy Mother of God Eleusa, Nesebar

Worth a detour

The clearest demonstration in Bulgaria that the sea has risen. Eleusa was a three-nave basilica of the sixth century, twenty-eight metres by eighteen, and its northern part and a section of the central nave are now underwater. What is left stands on the north shore of the peninsula beside the stone windmill, free and open. Go at first light when the water is flat and you can see the rest of it.

Story

Background

The basilica had three apses and a narthex, with the two side aisles carrying smaller apses facing north and south — a three-part east end that the museum compares to Hagia Sophia in the town centre, with the difference of that tripled apse. Excavation began in 1920 and the remains have been partly restored.

Written sources mention it up to the fourteenth century, by which time it formed part of a monastery complex. Its icon of the Virgin Eleusa — Our Lady of Tenderness — was plated in silver by Tsar Ivan Alexander, which says something about the standing of the house.

The subsidence is not dramatic to look at and needs the right conditions: calm water, low sun, no wind. Early morning in September is ideal. From the surviving masonry you can trace the lines of the walls continuing out into the shallows, and the scale of what has gone becomes obvious. The site is unfenced, on the coastal path round the northern rim, and the stone windmill beside it is worth the two minutes as well — a cylinder of quarried stone with an oak-log stair inside and its millstones still in place on the third floor.