Category: Sights

When you arrive at София you can’t overlook the mountains next to the city, the Vitosha. It is surprisingly steep and the highest mountain is the Tscherni Wrach (black peak) with around 2,290 meters in height. The mountains dominate the skyline of the city and are an important recreation zone – for hiking, but also for skiing as the snow stays for a long time even after the winter.

Boyana is a city quarter in the Southwest of София at the foot of the Vitosha mountains. It is the region where the rich people and the leaders of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria created their homes – even the presidential palace and the assembly of ministers can be found here. Most tourists come to this remote part for a small but important beauty: the Boyana church, a UNESCO world heritage site.

If you visit the bell park of София at the wrong point in time, it might be really loud there. It is a bell tower surrounded by seventy bells from different countries, also some that don’t exist anymore. Children are allowed to try them all out. Why only children? The monument called Kambanite (meaning ‘The bells‘) was created when in 1979 Bulgaria hosted the international children’s festival of UNESCO. Delegations from all over the world brought bells from their countries to complete the monument.

The oldest and largest park of София is the Borissowa gradina, named after tsar Boris III from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry. It was created in 1884 in the Southeast outside of the city; due to the vast growth of София it is now part of the city center. When you walk through it you can see the different faces of this place: in the North it is a landscape park, further south it is more like a forest.

One of the most important sights at София is the Alexander Newski Cathedral. It is huge, the dome is around 45 meters high and it was designed in Neo-Byzantine style. The impressive house of prayer was built from the year 1882 on and is today the central church of the Bulgarian-Orthodox community and one of the fifty biggest Christian churches. It gives space to 5,000 worshippers and is named after Alexander Newsky, a saint of the Russian-Orthodox church.

You might search quite a while until you find the rotunda dedicated to St. George the dragon slayer at the center of София, Bulgaria. The church, which is the oldest building of the city, is fully surrounded by modern buildings which contain a hotel, the ministry of science and the seat of the Bulgarian president. It dates back to Roman times and was built in the 4th century; the frescos inside date back to between the 10th and the 14th century CE.