Sofia Days : Free Sofia Tour
- Sumit Poddar
- Nov 30, 2018
- 5 min read
While in Sofia you must try the Free Sofia Tour.
This tour will literally introduce you to the beautiful city of Sofia and enable you to identify and chalk out your itinerary effectively .
So this being suggested by a Bulgarian Colleague of mine, we opted to go for this tour the only Saturday we had in between work.
The Facebook page(https://www.facebook.com/freesofiatour/) was very responsive with a welcome nod to my request of joining them.
So who are these guys and what are they doing : These are the few good volunteers of the City who are part of the Bulgarian NGO named 365 Association, who specializes in tourism and culture .
They conduct the Free Sofia Tour for "Free" 365 days a year, 3 times a day (10 AM , 11 AM and 6 PM ) and any one can join them.
If you are happy at the end of the tour you might go ahead and give them a donation or its totally cool if you say your good byes and leave.
It all starts in front of The Palace Of Justice where folks like me gather and wait for the good volunteers to start the tour.
Once you reach the spot, you get introduced to your friendly and enthusiastic Tour Guides, for us it was Vasil (you can even call him Vasco or V if you please) and Viki. They assess the headcount and accordingly divide the group and start the walking tour. I went with V.
This is a walking tour, where you are explained about all the places you visit while on the walk and trust me when I say , the tour guides are so good in explaining things to you and answering your quick queries you will really enjoy the walk.
For instance , are you aware how old is Sofia? Well it is one of the oldest capital city in Europe, in fact its the second oldest capital after Athens in Greece.Sofia has various historic periods , the first started from Thracian times.
The Thracians were the first known inhabitants of these lands. Well known warrior Thracian known these days are Spartacus.
Their supreme God was the God Of Wine , they spent lot of time juicing grapes and later drinking them.
They were here living peacefully till the Roman Empire came knocking around 1st Century AD.
The Romans worked on making the small Thracian City to a bigger one and named it, Serdica, after the name of the tribe that used to live here.Eventually Serdica became a major trade center , a famous market place, a spa resort in the east, for the Roman Empire.
The city was constructed in the middle of the highway of the Eastern Roman Empire. Everything were nice and peaceful till the 5th and 6th century until other people came to this part of the world. The Bulgar and Slavic tribes arrived here and established the first Bulgarian State.
After that during the 14th Century this place belonged to the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria was part of Ottoman Empire till the 19th century.
The ottoman empire was replaced by the Russian Empire, which also was replaced by the Communists after the second World War.
Bulgaria was a communist country for 45 years, until something very big happened somewhere in Germany (The Berlin wall situation)and Bulgaria was transitioned to a democracy after that.
Since 2004 Bulgaria is a NATO country and since 2007 Bulgaria joined the European Union and since 2010 Free Sofia Tour started.
What a wonderful start of the Tour with such loads of information !
All the above detail was given and strangely I realized the Human inquisitive nature was gulping it like a chilled bottle of Coca-Cola.
Behind the stage is one of the famous landmark in Sofia , the Eastern Orthodox , St Nedelya Church . The Church which in 1925 witnessed a devastating attack during an assassination attempt on the then Czar , which the Czar escaped for being late for the event but hundreds of other people died or was severely injured.
We started our walk from this point, V explaining so many details which now started to be overlapping , so I focused on the next part, yes you guessed that right, Photographs. (Actually was having a hard time to toggle between Go Pro and Camera).
We were informed that The church Aya Sofia is the reason why the city is named Sofia. In literal translation Aya Sofia means Holy Wisdom or Divine Wisdom. However the below picture is that of Thracian Saint, St Sofia who finds an attractive statue wearing a Victory throne right in the middle of the City.
The developments that happened here in this modern City has not let the old charm disappear. The modernization planning is done in a layered approach, thus you can take a few stairs and walk straight into a Mediaval period Eastern Orthodox Church like that of the St Petka of the Saddlers, constructed in the 14th Century BC and again go another layer down and you will be standing on the Roman Era roads , which is well preserved till date. So even though you are in the 21st Century walking between layers you get to travel back in time to the early eras.
Exciting isn't it ?
Moving on with the tour will share few more photographs and try to keep the details as abstract as possible here.
Also apologies for not able to name/call out each monument visited.
Our tour ended around half past noon, at the St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral.
The cathedral being an elite example of fusion of monumental and decorative arts.Named after the saint patron of The Tsar-Liberator. It was the most decorative structure that we visited on that tour. As per the information available, construction commenced on 1904 and was completed on 1916. Bulgarian and Byzantine architecture is what you get to experience and trust me when I say you will be blown away with the effect. Unfortunately cameras were not allowed inside , so whatever my cameras have witnessed is on the outer-side, but when compared to the interior intricacies,the Paintings, the crafted artworks it appeared easy on the outside.
The tour provided so many insights of Sofia that at the end, it felt like, if only I could join the next group and redo the same steps.
Not every monuments we visited could be showed here in this blog. Neither can I recall the many short stories that we got to hear. However,will never forget the fabulous enthusiasm that I saw in our host V and Thanked him for all his efforts.
So a big shout out to you all ! Free Sofia Tour, you guys Rock !! keep up the great work that you all are doing.
Signing off for now from Spinning Wheels ! Chao !
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