Boyana Church, Sofia

Boyana Church, Sofia

The Boyana Church is a medieval Bulgarian Orthodox church located at the foot of Mt Vitosha on the outskirts of Sofia.

The Boyana Church is a medieval Bulgarian Orthodox church located at the foot of Mt Vitosha on the outskirts of Sofia. One of the most complete and perfectly preserved monuments of east European medieval art, the complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is part of the Bulgarian National Museum of History.

It has 3 parts –

• original east wing from the 10th-11th century, built on a Greek Cross plan as a single-apse cross-vaulted church with inbuilt cruciform supports.
• central wing from the 13th century built by Sevastokrator Kaloyan of the Second Bulgarian Empire, It consists of a lower level crypt with a semi-cylindrical vault and 2 arcosolia, and an upper level family chapel similar to the eastern church. The façade is decorated with ceramic ornaments.
• west expansion from the middle of the 19th century.

Its walls are covered with Byzantine frescoes depicting 89 scenes with 240 human images which reflect the beauty of life and nature. Of these, the most important are the frescoes from 1259, painted as a second layer over a previous layer, by the so-called Boyan Master - a group of medieval artists from the Turnovo School including Dimitriy Zograf. These are considered to be close to the Palaiologian Renaissance and predecessors of the European Renaissance.

Highlights include ✔the portraits of Sevastokrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava on the northern wall, ✔Bulgarian Tsar Konstantin Assen and Queen Irina, ✔Christ Pantocrator on the dome and the Four Evangelists in the pendentives of the east wing, ✔'The Virgin Enthroned' in the altar conch, ✔18 scenes from the life of St. Nicholas and oldest known portrait of St John of Rila in the narthex (central part), and ✔the 17th century fresco of St. Ivan Rilski.

Entry is restricted to 10 visitors at a time for 15 minutes.