
Sofia Church of St. George
Fourth-century red-brick rotunda with layered medieval frescoes and a ring of painted prophets in its dome.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Rotunda of St George in Sofia opens in eleven eighty-three, with King Béla the Third of Hungary marching through the Balkans and his men loading booty from the city. It follows one chest from that haul, the relics of John of Rila, and the archbishops of Esztergom who had their own views on where it belonged. Listen from the centre of the floor, where you can look straight up at the prophets in the dome.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Sofia Balkan Palace
Grand neoclassical hotel from the fifties, its courtyard holding a Roman-era rotunda and ruins.
Boyana Church
Small medieval church with lifelike 1259 frescoes and donor portraits at the foot of Vitosha.
Medieval orthodox temple of St. Petka Samardjiyska
Half-buried medieval chapel of the saddlers' guild, with a crypt and centuries of layered murals.
Orthodox temple of The Seven Saints
Ottoman mosque turned Orthodox church, its dome and walls painted by artists over seven decades.
Seslavtsi monastery of St Nicholas the Miracle-Maker
Seventeenth-century monastery church with unrestored frescoes and an early painted group of Bulgarian saints.
Kremikovtsi Monastery
Hillside Orthodox monastery with a small stone church painted with rare fifteenth-century frescoes.