Things to see in Sofia

After entering Hall 1 of the Ethnographic Museum you’ll be greeted with step-by-step instructions on how to make kirpich (bricks). It's around this point you’ll probably consider the entrance fee money badly spent, but don’t give up. Ethnography is the study of different cultures and how they behave and evolve, and in this sense the museum mirrors its aims completely. After starting with the building blocks of Bulgarian rural life, things progress into an exhibition about the town of Yugavo in the Rhodope Mountains. It includes some beautiful black and white pictures from the village including men in fezzes and straight-backed woman, all with darkened skin from a lifetime in the fields. In the next rooms you will see a different kind of building block: looms and knitting needles the size of pneumatic drills. There are also children’s toys and dolls that would not out of place in a horror film today. Certainly one of the city’s less trumpeted attractions, it’s without doubt one of its most charming.

Tues-Sun 1000–1800.

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During the years of Ottoman occupation there were 70 mosques in Sofia, but today there is only one still functioning. Banya Bashi Mosque was built in 1576 by Mimar Sinan, who also built the Sultan Selim Mosque in Edirne and Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque. The mosque’s finest feature is its domed ceiling, restored to its original design after the fall of Communism. Loudspeakers call the city's Muslim minority to prayer five times a day: on Friday there can be as many as 400 worshippers in attendance. The mosque is not officially open as a tourist attraction but visitors are welcome outside prayer times, including women, just be sure to dress respectfully.

The inside is decorated with fine blue tiles and calligraphy, citing texts from the Koran, as the portrayal of human figures is banned in Islamic art. Known as Banya Bashi, meaning ‘many baths', outside the mosque there are the small remains of the original hammam (Turkish baths), unearthed in 2003-2004.

Daily 0500-2000 (excluding prayer time).

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Situated behind the Hali, the Central Sofia Synagogue is the second largest Sephardic synagogue in Europe. Designed by the Austrian architect Friedrich

Grunanger, the synagogue was built to resemble an earlier synagogue in Vienna, which was destroyed by the Nazis. The century-old building is a square block of Spanish-Moorish design, with a large central dome lit by a showpiece 2,250kg (4,960lb) chandelier. The outer walls are ornamented with floral and geometric motifs. The synagogue was originally intended to accommodate 1,300 worshippers, but nowadays services are only attended by 50 or 60 people, and services on regular Sabbaths are usually held in a small room off the main gallery. Visitors must ring the bell on the gates for entry.

Mon-Fri 0900-1630; closed Bulgarian and Jewish Sabbath and holidays.

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If you need an antidote to garish, golden Orthodox churches, visit the three room crypt underneath the Church of St Nicholas (also known as the Russian Church). The walls are decorated with typically Orthodox imagery throughout and unsurprisingly St Nicholas is depicted as the star of the show. Visitors can write out prayers and drop them into the box at the end of the third room. Believers kneel and kiss the grey coffin of Bishop Seraphim, revered by many in the country, while offering marks of the cross for St Nicholas or loved ones. A genuinely powerful setting, the only thing you’ll be asked to pay for is a candle, should you wish to buy one.

Mon-Sun 0730-1800.

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Standing in the courtyard of the Sheraton Balkan Hotel, the tiny sunken redbrick Rotunda of St George is the oldest preserved building in Sofia, built in the fourth century as a Roman temple. Careful restoration work has revealed three layers of exquisite medieval frescoes, which had been hidden by plaster during the 500 years of Ottoman rule. The impressive cupola bears a 14th-century portrait of Christ the Pantocrator, surrounded by four angels and symbols of the Evangelists. Beneath, 12th-century fresco work depicts 22 prophets holding scrolls, with texts alternately in Bulgarian and Greek. To the east lie excavated foundations of an octagonal-shaped Roman public building and paved street.

Daily 0800-1700 (winter); daily 0800-1800 (summer).

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