St Sofia Basilica in Sofia: The Church That Named the City

St Sofia Basilica is the red-brick church across the square from Alexander Nevsky, and it's the one the city is named after. The church costs nothing to enter, and for €4 you can walk underneath it among Roman tombs from the 3rd to 5th centuries. This is how I'd visit it: tickets and hours, the tombs, the eternal flame and the poet's grave outside, the history and what's next door.

What St Sofia Basilica is

St Sofia (Sveta Sofia, Света София) is a working Bulgarian Orthodox church from the 6th century, and the Rotunda of St George is the only church in Sofia with older standing walls. It's a cross-shaped basilica of red brick, 47 metres long and 20 metres wide, with three altars and a low tower over the middle. It stands on the western side of Alexander Nevsky's square, and the antiques stalls run right up to its garden.

Nevsky and its square sit at number 1 on my list of the 11 things I'd do in Sofia, and I never leave that square without crossing to St Sofia. It's my favourite of the two: about 1,500 years old, with a Roman cemetery under the floor that you can walk through.

St Sofia opening hours, tickets and the underground level

The church is free. You just walk in. The paid part is the archaeological level underneath, which the Museum of the History of Sofia runs as one of its branches, at 2 Parizh Street. It opens from 10am to 5.30pm. From 1 May to 31 October that's every day, and from 1 November to 30 April it's Tuesday to Sunday.

Using a camera down there costs extra, on a separate photo ticket.

Before a bank holiday, I check the hours on the museum's page for the St Sofia level, and the full price list sits in the museum's ticket PDF.

What to see inside St Sofia Basilica

Step inside and the great piers and lower walls are bare red brick, lit by tall arched windows, with an iron chandelier hanging in front of a small white iconostasis. The iconostasis is the screen of icons in front of the altar, and here it carries a handful of icons painted on gold backgrounds.

Among the icons, look for Holy Wisdom, the church's dedication, painted as a young Christ seated on a rainbow. There are icons of St George and St Vladimir too.

Dress as you would for any Orthodox church: shoulders and knees covered, and hats off for men. Keep your voice low, leave the people at the icons alone, and keep the camera down during a service, the same church manners Bulgarians expect everywhere in the country.

The underground level: Roman tombs and three older churches

Under the church floor lies part of the eastern necropolis, the cemetery of Roman Serdica. The museum counts about 50 graves and tombs there, from the 3rd to the 5th centuries: stone sarcophagi, plain graves dug into the ground, and brick tombs closed with flat stone slabs or rounded vaults. A few of the vaulted tombs still have painted walls, which is rare, and they're the reason I'd come down.

Down there too are the foundations of three earlier churches. The basilica above your head is the fourth on the spot, built at the end of the 5th century or the start of the 6th. I give it 45 minutes. At €4, it's the cheapest ticket on my list of Sofia's best museums.

The cemetery sat just outside the walls of Roman Serdica, whose streets now lie open in the concourse of Serdika metro station, about 15 minutes west. They're free to walk through, so the city and its cemetery come to €4 together.

The Tomb of Honorius

Just north-west of the church, a glass pavilion covers the Tomb of Honorius, a brick tomb with a rounded vault from the 5th century. Red letters inside give the name of the man buried there: "Honorius, servant of God".

The Unknown Soldier memorial and Ivan Vazov's grave

The Monument to the Unknown Soldier

Against the south wall of St Sofia, an eternal flame burns behind a granite tomb slab, the memorial to the Bulgarians who died in the country's wars. The memorial in its present form dates from 1981, and its flame was brought from Shipka. Bronze wreaths are fixed to the granite on either side, and the wall behind the flame carries lines by Ivan Vazov in capitals: "Bulgaria, they died for you. You alone were worthy of them, and they, Mother, were worthy of you."

If you've learnt a bit of the Cyrillic alphabet before the trip, the first word is an easy win: БЪЛГАРИЙО, "O Bulgaria". It's a war memorial, so I keep it short and quiet: a minute, one photo, and on.

Ivan Vazov's grave

In the garden beside the church, Ivan Vazov lies under a plain uncut boulder. He's Bulgaria's national poet and the author of Under the Yoke, the novel set around the 1876 April Uprising that Bulgarians study at school. The stone reads Иванъ Вазовъ in the old spelling, with his dates, 1850 to 1921, and a small carved cross.

Why Sofia is named after St Sofia church

Sveta Sofia means Holy Wisdom. Sofia is the Greek word for wisdom, and the church is dedicated to the wisdom of God, the same dedication as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, another early Byzantine church. The Romans called the city Serdica, and medieval Bulgarians called it Sredets. In the 14th century, the city took its name from this church, and it has kept it since.

During the Ottoman centuries, the church was turned into a mosque, with minarets added and its medieval frescoes destroyed. Two earthquakes in the 19th century brought a minaret down, the mosque was abandoned, and restoration as a church ran from about 1926 to 1935.

Parts of the church floor carry early Christian mosaics with plant, animal and geometric patterns, laid long before the city borrowed the church's name.

How to get to St Sofia Basilica

Sofia University, on the M1 line, is the nearest metro station, about 10 minutes' walk from the church. The M4 airport trains run along the same track, so you can ride from Terminal 2 with no change. A single ticket on the Sofia metro costs €0.80.

On foot from Serdika, the central metro interchange, it's about 15 minutes east along Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard and its yellow paving bricks. The route passes the Russian Church's gold domes, and St Sofia is 5 minutes on from there.

What's near St Sofia Basilica

St Sofia, Alexander Nevsky and the Russian Church sit within about 300 metres of each other, so I never plan St Sofia on its own.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

Across the square, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is the gold dome on every Sofia postcard. It was built between 1882 and 1912 for the Russian soldiers who died in the war of 1877 to 1878. It opens from 7am to 7pm every day, and the icon museum in its crypt has its own door on the outside of the building.

The antiques market

The stalls of the antiques market by the cathedral fill the park between Nevsky and St Sofia from about 10am every day, weather permitting. The tables carry new icons painted on wood, Soviet medals, old cameras and embroidered linen. Ask the price before you pick anything up, and offer less.

The Russian Church

Five minutes away on Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard, the Russian Church of St Nicholas has the gold onion domes and green-tiled roofs. It was built between 1907 and 1914 as the Russian embassy's church. Downstairs, people leave wishes written on slips of paper at the tomb of Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev. Entry is free, and photos inside are not allowed.

Further west, around Serdika, sit the smaller churches in Sofia, with St Petka of the Saddlers sunk below street level among the Roman ruins. I give those a morning of their own.

My morning plan around St Sofia

This is the morning I give friends from Tuesday to Sunday. It runs about three hours and costs €4, the underground ticket, or €14 if you add the crypt icons under Nevsky.

The Rotunda of St George sits in a courtyard behind the Presidency, and from there you're five minutes from lunch on Vitosha Boulevard. On a weekend in Sofia, this morning fits the Saturday and leaves the Sunday for the mountain.