Interesting facts you will learn from this video:
- Sofia (at that time called Serdika) is 1700 years older than Brussels.
- Emperor Constantine the Great was considering Sofia for the capital of the Byzantine Empire, but eventually chose Constantinople. He said “Serdika is my Rome”.
- The oldest functioning church in Europe is St. George’s Rotunda (326 AD). It is right next to the Bulgarian presidency.
- In the 4th century, Serdika was the spiritual capital of the Christian world.
- The Boyana Church frescoes are considered to be the portents of the European Renaissance.
- At the age of 28, the Bulgarian architect Petko Momchilov won a competition against Gustave Eiffel.
- The Square of Tolerance is a unique place in Sofia: within less than 300 meters, you can see temples from the world’s four major religions: a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic cathedral, and an orthodox church.
- More steel was used for the construction of the National Palace of Culture than for the Eiffel Tower. The building was erected for the commemoration of 1300 anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian state.
- Sofia’s motto is “Grows But Does Not Age.”
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 23, 2011 at 11:17 am
Nikola
Nice video, informative and interesting.
January 23, 2011 at 8:16 pm
max
One little correction, if you allow me
Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity are not 2 different religions.
January 24, 2011 at 1:10 am
zikata
I completely agree Max!
According to Wikipedia, in Bulgaria, Roman Catholicism is the third largest religious congregation after Orthodox Christianity and Islam. That is, 44 000 people said they are Catholic during the last census in 2001. There are almost a million Muslims, or more than 12% of the population.
I was actually surprised by the statistics. I’ve seen probably only one or two Catholic churches in Bulgaria, but many more mosques and several synagogues. The Orthodox churches and monasteries are, of course, plenty!
January 24, 2011 at 10:59 am
max
Well Catholics are living in concentrated areas, such as Rakovski town in Plovdiv area, besides, any kind of religious temples, aside from mosques, are rarely built in the last 20 years. It was supposed to be a shift from communistic favoured atheism to religion, but people are not more into religion now than they were 2 decades ago.
January 24, 2011 at 6:25 am
katley
I love old cities, too bad Sofia was one I missed while I was in Europe. The oldest city I visited was Trier, founded by the Romans. One of the city gates (Porta Nigra) and the Roman baths are tourist attractions. There is also a Roman bridge that’s still in use. Here’s the link for Trier on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier
Thanks for sharing this video. It was upbeat and informative.
January 24, 2011 at 8:12 pm
zikata
Trier does look lovely! Thank you for the Wiki article – great pictures!