11 Best Things to Do in Sofia: My Personal Favourites

Sofia packs Roman streets, gold-domed churches and a 2,290-metre mountain into one compact, cheap city, and most of its big sights cost nothing to see. I've lived here long enough to have strong opinions, so this is my own list: the 11 things I take visiting friends to, with euro prices, opening hours and how I'd fit them into a long weekend.

My 11 favourite things to do in Sofia at a glance

Prices are in euros, which Bulgaria has used since 1 January 2026, and the times are what I'd allow on a first visit.

The 11 best things to do in Sofia

1. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and the antiques market outside it

This is the building on every Sofia postcard, and it still stops me when I walk past. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral went up between 1882 and 1912 as a memorial to the soldiers who died in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878. It stands 50.52 metres high, and its 12 bells weigh about 25 tonnes between them.

Inside it's dark, candlelit and enormous, with murals and icons on every wall. Go for the Sunday liturgy at 9.30am to hear the service sung, or in the hour before sunset, when the domes turn properly gold.

Then wander over to the stalls in the garden beside the cathedral. The antiques market at Alexander Nevsky sells Orthodox icons, Soviet medals and badges, old film cameras, embroidered tablecloths and the odd communist-era poster. Some of it is old and some of it was made last year, so buy what you like the look of, haggle politely and bring cash.

Across the square stands the 6th-century St Sofia Basilica, built over a Roman cemetery you can visit underground for €4.

2. Eat like a local: banitsa, shopska salad and rakia

Bulgarian food is cheap, filling and built on white cheese, and you'll eat well for about half what you'd pay at home. A casual lunch runs €8 to €10, a coffee €2 to €3, and a simple dinner €15 to €20 a head before drinks.

Start with banitsa (баница), filo pastry baked with eggs and sirene, the salty white cheese. Bakeries and kiosks sell it hot in the mornings, and it comes with ayran, a salted yoghurt drink, or boza, a thick, sweet-sour grain drink. I eat banitsa from a Sofia kiosk standing up on the way somewhere, which is how Sofia does breakfast.

Shopska salad (шопска салата) arrives before almost every meal: tomato, cucumber, peppers and onion under a snowdrift of grated sirene. It's white, green and red like the flag, and it tops my list of Bulgarian dishes to try, with kebapche and tarator, a cold yoghurt and cucumber soup, close behind.

Rakia is the fruit brandy Bulgarians drink as an aperitif, usually grape or plum and about 40% in the shops, stronger when it's home-made. It comes in a small glass with the salad and you sip it slowly through the meal. Look the other person in the eye, say "nazdrave" and clink.

For all three at one table, I book visitors into Hadjidraganovite Izbi, my pick of Sofia's traditional restaurants: a cellar on Hristo Belchev Street near Vitosha Boulevard, with live folk music from 8pm to 11pm every night except Monday.

3. Ancient Serdica, the Rotunda of St George and the four places of worship

Sofia is built on top of the Roman city of Serdica, and the best stretch of it sits in and around Serdika metro station. The excavated streets and building foundations of ancient Serdica are free to walk through on your way to the trains. The Romans took the area around 29 BC, the Huns destroyed the city in the 5th century and the emperor Justinian rebuilt it.

Round the corner, in a courtyard behind the Presidency, is the Rotunda of St George, a 4th-century red-brick church and the oldest building still standing in Sofia. It served as a mosque under the Ottomans. Three layers of frescoes survive inside, the earliest from the 10th century, with 22 prophets painted around the dome. Entry is free, from 8am to 7.30pm.

From there, an Orthodox church, a mosque, a synagogue and a Catholic cathedral stand a few minutes apart. St Nedelya, the Orthodox church on St Nedelya Square, has had a church on its site since the 10th century. A bomb attack inside it killed 150 people in 1925, and it reopened in 1933. It's free and open from 7am to 7pm.

Banya Bashi Mosque, built in 1566 and credited to the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, is the only working mosque in Sofia, named for the hot baths it stands over. It sits under a 15-metre dome, opens from 5am to 8pm daily and welcomes visitors between prayers if they dress modestly.

A couple of minutes away, the Sofia Synagogue charges €10 (€8 for students and seniors), which covers an audio guide, its museum exhibition and permission to take photos. It opens from 9am to 5pm Sunday to Friday and closes on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, so fit it into a weekday or a Sunday.

The fourth is St Joseph's, Sofia's Catholic cathedral on Todor Alexandrov Boulevard, with the excavated Western Gate of Serdica right beside it. I finish the loop there because it brings you back to the Romans where you started.

4. Fill a bottle at the hot mineral springs by the Central Mineral Baths

People have used Sofia's hot springs since the 6th century BC, and you still can, for free. Along the side of the old Central Mineral Baths, a 1913 building that was the city's main public bath until the 1980s, a row of taps runs hot mineral water. Locals queue with plastic bottles and big canisters. Bring an empty bottle and join them, and let the water cool before you drink it.

The building itself now houses the Museum of the History of Sofia, where adults pay €5, entry is free on the first Thursday of the month and the doors stay shut on Mondays from November to April. My favourite piece inside is the Thracian gold bowl from Kazichene.

5. The Original Sofia Pub Crawl, for the nightlife

Sofia's best bars are in basements and behind doors you'd walk straight past, which is why I send visiting friends on the Original Sofia Pub Crawl for their first night out. It runs on Friday and Saturday nights and has been going since 2014.

You meet at 9pm in front of the Palace of Justice at 2 Vitosha Boulevard, under the left-hand lion statue, a few minutes' walk from Serdika metro. A local English-speaking guide takes the group through 4 bars, with a welcome shot in each, drinking games and no cover charges, then into a club with free VIP entry around midnight. You can stay at the club as long as you like.

Booking is free, you can also just turn up, and drinks beyond the welcome shots are yours to buy. Groups run to 20 to 40 people and most come alone or in twos, so it's the easiest way I know to meet people in Sofia on a Friday. After that, going out in Sofia is easy on the wallet, with a local beer at around €2.

6. Vitosha Boulevard, NDK and South Park at sunset

Vitosha Boulevard is Sofia's main street, 2.7 km from St Nedelya Square down to South Park, and pedestrian along its central stretch. It's named after the mountain, and on a clear evening Vitosha closes off the end of the view. I walk it in the early evening, when the cafe terraces fill up, and keep heading south.

At the bottom is the National Palace of Culture, NDK to everyone in Sofia, a huge communist-era concert and conference hall with a long park and fountains in front. Skateboarders, families and couples crowd the park on summer evenings, and it's where I go to people-watch.

Cross the road behind NDK and you're in South Park (Южен парк), a long run of lawns and trees heading towards the mountain. It's calmer than Borisova Gradina, the best known of Sofia's parks, and full of dog walkers and runners. Sunset from the open grass, with Vitosha going pink beyond the tower blocks, is my favourite free hour in Sofia.

7. Museum of Socialist Art

When communism ended in Bulgaria in 1989, the statues came down, and a lot of them ended up here. The Museum of Socialist Art shows over 70 pieces of monumental sculpture in a 7,500 square metre park: communist leaders, heroic workers and partisans, plus the five-pointed star that once crowned the Party House in the city centre. Inside there's a 550-square-metre exhibition hall and a video room screening archival films.

Tickets are €8, or €4 for students and over-65s, and every Thursday it's €2. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm, with the ticket office closing at 5.30pm. It shuts on Mondays and on Bulgarian public holidays, so check the museum's visiting page before a bank holiday weekend. It's at 7 Luchezar Stanchev Street, a short walk from G.M. Dimitrov metro station.

8. Zhenski Pazar, the Women's Market

Zhenski Pazar, the Women's Market (Женски пазар), is a long strip of stalls on Stefan Stambolov Boulevard, a short walk west of Banya Bashi Mosque. It's where I buy fruit, vegetables, spices, honey and white cheese, and in late summer peppers by the bagful for roasting. Go in the morning when the stalls are fullest, bring small change and keep an eye on your pockets in the crowd.

If it rains, head for the covered Central Market Hall on Maria Luiza Boulevard. Its 1911 building reopened on 23 May 2024 after a renovation, as a market with an arts stage inside.

9. Boyana Church

Boyana Church is tiny, and it has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979. The main layer of frescoes dates from 1259, and the donor portraits of Sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava look like portraits of real people. They're the reason you've come.

The church sits at the foot of Vitosha at 3 Boyansko Ezero Street, about 8 km from the centre. Tickets are €10, or €3 for students and children over 7. From 1 November to 31 March it opens from 9am to 5.30pm (last tickets 5.20pm), and from 1 April to 31 October from 9.30am to 6pm. A metered Sofia taxi from the centre comes to about €8 to €10 by day at the standard tariff. The church closes on 1 January, Easter Sunday and 24 and 25 December.

10. Hike Vitosha: Boyana Waterfall or Cherni Vrah

Vitosha is the mountain at the end of Vitosha Boulevard and my favourite thing about living in this city. You can leave the centre after breakfast and be eating lunch on a summit.

The nearer walk is to Boyana Waterfall, a 25-metre fall on the Boyana River with its base at 1,260 metres. The trail climbs from the Boyana neighbourhood, so it pairs with the church: allow about 3 hours up on foot. Short on time, take a taxi to Kopitoto and it's about an hour's walk from there. In a cold winter the fall freezes and ice climbers take over.

Cherni Vrah, at 2,290 metres, is the top of Vitosha. The Simeonovo gondola to Aleko hut no longer runs, so the way up is bus 66 from Vitosha metro station to Aleko, at 1,810 metres, or a taxi. From the hut it's 3 km on foot and about 480 metres of climbing to the summit. The top has a weather station built in 1935 and a cafeteria serving hot meals.

11. Day trip to Rila Monastery

Rila Monastery is the big day out from Sofia: a striped, arcaded monastery in a forested valley of the Rila Mountains, about 120 km south of the city and 1,147 metres up. It's easy to do on your own. By car it's about 2 hours each way. There's no direct bus any more, so without a car you take a bus from Central Bus Station to Blagoevgrad, about 2 hours, then a taxi for the last 41 km.

Entry to the monastery and its church is free, and the combined museum ticket is €12. The little bakery outside the east gate fries mekitsa, rounds of hot dough, and I never leave without one. Cover your shoulders and knees for the church.

Agree the taxi fare in Blagoevgrad before you set off, and book the same driver for the ride back. Rila is my first pick of the day trips from Sofia, with Plovdiv, about 2 hours away by bus, a close second.

Free things to do in Sofia

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Serdica and the Rotunda, the mineral springs, Vitosha Boulevard with NDK and South Park, Zhenski Pazar, the Vitosha trails and Rila Monastery all cost nothing to enter, and so does St Nedelya. Four of the paid sights have a free or cheap day, and planning your days round them is the simplest way to do Sofia on a budget.

How I'd fit all 11 into a long weekend

All 11 fit into four days, Friday to Monday, if you land by Friday lunchtime. The plan works round the synagogue's Saturday closure, the Monday closures at the Museum of Socialist Art and, from November to April, the Mineral Baths museum, and the crawl's Friday and Saturday nights.

The centre is walkable, and for the rest I tap a contactless card on the metro or tram. A ride costs €0.80 and the daily cap is €2, so getting around Sofia by public transport never costs more than a coffee. Three days of tapping comes to €6 at most, less than the 72-hour card at €7.60.