Church of Saint George in Sozopol — Orthodox church, South Coast

Worth a detour

The parish church of the old town and the one most likely to be open when you try the handle. It holds relics of St John the Baptist, a fragment of the Holy Cross and myrrh from the tomb of St Nicholas, which for a small-town church on the Black Sea is a remarkable set. It takes fifteen minutes, it costs nothing, and it is two streets from the museum.

Story

Background

The church was listed as a cultural monument in 1962, with its bell tower protected separately. Sources give three different construction dates in the nineteenth century and none of them can be settled, so treat it simply as a Revival-period building on an older site — which is the usual story in Sozopol, where churches were rebuilt in place whenever they were allowed to be.

What is inside is a conventional Bulgarian Revival interior: a carved iconostasis, dark wood, oil lamps, the smell of beeswax. The relics are kept in the church and venerated by a steady stream of local visitors rather than displayed as exhibits, and the atmosphere is the point.

A clarification worth having. The relics found on St Ivan island in 2010 are a separate matter: the reliquary that held them is in the Archaeological Museum, and the relics themselves are shown in the Sts Cyril and Methodius church during the summer season. St George's relics of the same saint are older and unconnected to that find. Nobody in the town is much interested in the distinction, but a visitor who has read about the 2010 discovery will otherwise look for it in the wrong building. No hours are published for any church in Sozopol; mornings and early evenings are the safest attempts.

What this kind of place is

Orthodox church

An Eastern Orthodox church. Inside, the nave is separated from the altar by an iconostasis — a screen of icons in fixed ranks — and there are usually few or no seats, because Orthodox services are stood through. Shoulders and knees covered; photography is often allowed outside services but flash almost never is, and the rule is worth checking at the door rather than after.

From open data