I spend the 3rd March feast (Liberation of Bulgaria from 500 years !! Turkish Enslavement) by visiting the Bulgarian National History Museum that is located at the end of Sofia nearby Boyana suburb. Bulgarian National history museum is definitely the most unique museum and the biggest one I’ve visited in my wife. The museum is really huge 3 stages each one big as twice the size of a regular business building stage all filled with prehistoric unique findings connected to all nations that ever inhibited Bulgarian lands. There was a lot of history connected with Thracians, Goths, Geths, Byzantines, Prehistoric Bulgarians, Slavonics, a lot of cult objects to the god-mother and all kind of interesting stuff for anyone interested in antrophology.
The museum had a unique collection containing a miniatures of dresses of the world from all ages of human development, starting from ancient Egypt and rest of famous ancient civilizations, going through renesesance middle ages and ending up modern and most modern time. The clothes miniatures collection was prepared by a very educated lady and she worked on that unique collection for 20 years of her life, a collossal labour worthy of praise and honour !
The museum contains a prehistoric funerals dating by from 5th century B. C. to 1th century.
Currently the museum is also hosting the Panagurishte Treasure (A unique gold hand-made treasure dating back among the 3rd – 4th century B.C.! Tracian made craftwork and is probably unseen in a world scale). By visiting this museum you can learn almost all about history of Bulgaria as a nation from our creation in year 631 to current times. There are a lot of unique byzantine stones and columns in Old-Slavonic glagolic and cyrillic letters all around so the museum is a must see for anyone interested in slavonic nations research. Almost a whole stage of the museum contains artefacts connected to early Christianity on Bulgarian lands and all kind of Christian service objects. Just to mention few of the unique things there are Orthodox icons from 3rd century, Church service gospels from 13th – 15h century, priests dress, copies and original of ancient Church books etc.
The last 3rd stage has an interesting miniature of Antarctica. Very interesting fact about Antarctica is the Bulgarian expedition there has created a small chapel dedicated to the greatest Bulgarian saint, st. John of Rila. On the halls leading to 3rd floor there is a lot of unique Bulgarian national dresses (Nosij). Other thing that impressed me is the museums personal is outstanding (really helpful people). The whole third floor is filled with a lot of unique objects belonging to people from most new time after the liberation of Bulgaria. There were a lot of unique things such as Andrej Lapchev personal Belongings, the Thorne of the last Official Bulgarian King Boris the 3rd, the father of Bulgarian avatiaon (Asen Jordanov), dress of Bulgarian gurilla fighters for freedom, weapons used in wars, belongings to very famous Bulgarian authors and painters etc. On the first floor there is a nice and cheap coffee 1lv per coffee. On the first floor there is plenty of historical books every historian would love and a lot of nice suovenirs to take as a remembrance gifts. I’m proud to be Bulgarian for this wonderful museum. The Building was designed in Communism is also a unique the sideview from the Museum is amazing you see the mountain and green nature. So even going around the museum is an outstanding experience. National History museum is also cheap only 10 lv per person and believe me it worths this money! I recommend the museum to every European as one of the best tourist things to see in Bulgaria.
After the museum me Svetlana and Stanislav went to see the famous Boyana Church st., st. Nikolay (Nicolas) and st. Panteleimon, this Church is unique because it is among the few Churches from 11-th – 13th who preserved in their original form.
Church is about 40 minutes walk from the museum and there is a bus, but we choose to walk. Its worthy the walk as there is a lot of green nearby and Boyana is a very green and considered one of the best suburubs to live in Sofia (usually rich people in Sofia live in Boyana). The Boyana Church is unique and part of UNESCO heritage objects in Bulgaria, the Church is from 11-13th century and is one of the oldest ones preserved in its original building .The Church paintings are around the 15h century is a uniquely beautiful to see !! but its costly it costs 10 lv for 10 minutes, so I can’t say its worth the price.