🇧🇬 Bulgaria
Sofia
Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria and the largest city in the Balkans (population 1.3 million) — a city of 7,000 years of continuous settlement, built in a mountain basin surrounded by Vitosha Mountain (2,290 m, the closest mountain to any European capital), with a history that has been shaped by the Thracians, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Ottomans and Soviets, leaving one of the most layered and visually contradictory urban environments in Europe. Sofia (called Serdica by the Romans — Emperor Constantine the Great, who was born in the Roman Balkans (modern Serbia), declared "Serdica is my Rome" and considered moving the capital of the Empire from Rome to Serdica before choosing Constantinople) has been beneath every major empire that passed through the Balkans. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (the most important Bulgarian Orthodox church, built 1882-1912 to commemorate the Russian soldiers who died liberating Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War; the largest Eastern Orthodox cathedral in the world after the Saint Sophia in Kyiv; the golden dome is the defining element of the Sofia skyline), the Roman ruins visible throughout the city centre (the Serdica archaeological complex under the National Archaeological Museum, the visible Roman forum beneath the Sofia Hotel Balkan and the rotunda of St. George), and the Rila Monastery day trip (UNESCO World Heritage — the most significant Bulgarian Orthodox monastery, 120 km south of Sofia, one of the finest examples of Bulgarian National Revival architecture) define the Sofia experience.