Saint Zosimus church

Worth a detour

A small chapel in the public garden at the neck of the old town, built in 1857 over the remains of a medieval church, with icons by the Revival painter known as Dimitar Sozopolchanin. It takes ten minutes, it is on the way in or out of the peninsula, and it is a good deal quieter than anything else here.

Story

Background

Zosimus of Apollonia is a local martyr, and the chapel that carries his name is a modest nineteenth-century building on an older foundation. It was declared a cultural monument in 1962, in the preliminary category of local significance — which is to say the state notes it without making any great claim for it, and that is about right.

What gives it interest is the painter. Dimitar Sozopolchanin, Dimitar of Sozopol, was one of a group of icon painters working this coast in the Revival period, and his work turns up in churches from Ahtopol to the Strandzha villages. Seeing a handful of his icons here, in the town he was named for, is a better introduction to the local school than a museum case would be.

The chapel sits in the town garden rather than in the old streets, near the point where the peninsula joins the mainland, so most visitors pass within thirty metres of it on the way to the car parks and never notice. It is frequently locked. If you find it open, go in; if not, it costs you nothing but the detour, and the garden is a pleasant place to sit out the hot part of the afternoon in any case.