Boyana Church

Registered as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage in 1979, the Boyana church, Saint Nikola and Panteleimon, is one of the most representative picturesque monuments in the country. 

It was built during the Middle Ages and is among the 40 churches that have remained intact to this day in Bulgaria. It is known that during that time there have been about 20,000 or 30,000, but due to the Ottoman occupation, there were no churches allowed to be taller than a Turkish soldier riding a horse. Therefore, many of the churches were demolished, although nobody knows why, precisely the church in Boyana was not one of them.

It is located in the neighborhood of Boyana, at the foot of Vitosha Mountain, a short distance from the center of Sofia. The church is not so popular for its architectural value, but for the paintings inside, which endow the year 1259 and have been very well preserved. Apart from the frescoes that are part of the Old and New Testaments, some of the paintings are of old Bulgarian kings that are painted from head to toe with a very high qualitative value. It is a fact that the frescoes are almost all related to secular portraits, but in the church, there are more than 240 paintings that represent the outstanding achievements of culture in Bulgaria during the Middle Ages. In some parts of the religious scenes, elements of the popular lifestyle are represented.