Europe's most underrated capital where banitsa comes out of the oven at dawn and Byzantine churches hide beneath Ottoman mosques
Sofia is the bargain capital of the European Union and also one of its oldest continuously inhabited cities — over 7,000 years of settlement layer below the city's streets, marked by a Roman amphitheatre in a shopping centre basement, a Thracian gold burial below a hotel, and a Byzantine basilica squeezed between a mosque and an Ottoman bathhouse in the city centre. The food is all dairy and dough at breakfast — banitsa (filo pastry filled with sirene white cheese, fresh from the oven) and ayran (cold yogurt drink) at every bufe kiosk from 6am — then grilled meats and rich shopska salata in t…
Ancient Serdica — modern Sofia — was the favourite city of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who considered making it the capital of the Roman Empire before settling on Byzantium (Constantinople). The city was under Ottoman rule for nearly 500 years (1382–1878), which left the Banya Bashi Mosque (still in use) and the Mineral Baths building but relatively little Turkish architecture compared to other Balkan cities — most Ottoman-era buildings were demolished after Bulgaria's liberation. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, built between 1882 and 1912 to commemorate Russian soldiers who died in…