Saint Sophia Church

Worth a detour

Sofia is named after this building, not the other way round: the town was Serdica until the church's name gradually took over in the Middle Ages. Above ground it is bare red brick with almost nothing inside, and that austerity is the appeal. Below ground is a fourth-century necropolis with mosaic floors and painted tomb walls. Pay for the basement.

Story

Background

What stands now is the fifth church on the spot, put up in the middle of the sixth century during Justinian's reign — a cross plan under a dome, contemporary with the great Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and named for the same idea, Holy Wisdom rather than any saint. Under the floor are the remains of the four earlier basilicas, the oldest from the fourth century, and under those the eastern cemetery of Roman Serdica.

In the sixteenth century the Ottomans converted it to a mosque, destroyed the wall paintings and added minarets. Earthquakes in 1818 and 1858 brought a minaret down and the building was given up; it spent the following decades as a store, and Russian troops were met here with a service of thanksgiving in January 1878. Restoration began after 1900, which is why the brick looks as tidy as it does.

The underground level is run as an archaeological site by the city's history museum, one of several around the centre. You walk on raised walkways over stone tombs, some still carrying their painted decoration, and over mosaic pavements from the early churches. It is a small, cool, quiet space, and it does more to explain what Serdica was than anything above ground.