Church of Saint John the Baptist

Worth a detour

The oldest church still standing in Nesebar and the one that shows how the town built before it learned to decorate. Tenth century, fourteen metres by ten, of rough stone and mortar with a cylindrical drum and hemispherical dome, three apses and no narthex. Restoration work in 2012 and 2013 found that it sits on the foundations of a sixth-century basilica. About €2.50.

Story

Background

Architecturally it is a transition: not quite the shortened basilica of the earlier period, not quite the cross-in-square that came after, with three naves divided by two longitudinal walls under semi-cylindrical vaults. The municipal guide says the golden ratio governs the proportions. High blind arches articulate the west, north and south facades, with traces of decoration around the windows and above the door, but there is none of the ceramic and brickwork display of the fourteenth-century churches.

The interior was plastered and painted. What survives is fragmentary but includes a donor's portrait of the fourteenth century on the south wall and part of a St Marina of the seventeenth on the south-eastern column — three centuries of repainting in one room.

The excavation under the floor during the 2012–13 restoration found an early Byzantine three-nave basilica of the sixth century beneath, originally with a single semicircular apse and two smaller ones added later to the side naves. The church also has a place in the town's modern history: the Archaeological Museum, founded in 1956, put its first exhibition here. Entry is about €2.50 and it is on Mitropolitska Street; in the winter months it opens only by arrangement.