Sofia Audio Tours

Sofia has been inhabited for seven thousand years and built over four times. The Thracians were here first, then the Romans who called it Serdica and made it a provincial capital important enough that Emperor Constantine the Great was said to remark 'Serdica is my Rome.' The Roman street grid still shapes parts of the modern city center, and the metro construction in the early 2000s kept breaking into Roman ruins: the Serdica II station is essentially an underground museum where the platforms are ringed by exposed mosaic floors, column bases, and amphorae from the 4th century city. Walking Sofia is a continuous archaeological accident.

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was built between 1882 and 1912 to commemorate the Russian soldiers who died in the Russo-Turkish War that liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878.

Its gold-plated dome is visible from most of the city and its interior, which can hold 5,000 people, is one of the largest cathedral spaces in the Eastern Orthodox world. A few blocks away, the Russian Church of Saint Nicholas the Miracle-Maker has five vivid green domes and a mosaic facade that seem entirely transplanted from Moscow. The same neighborhood holds the former Communist Party headquarters, a concrete block that loomed over the city for 45 years and is now slowly being converted into government offices and apartments in a process that moves at the pace that all post-communist reckonings move: slowly, contentiously, and without clear resolution.