SOFIA CIVITAS

Sofia has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the CITY OR CIVITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the the aeternitas and the future of Europe.

Sofia is one of the most ancient cities of the history of European integration, signed in great part by Christianity. As ancient site of Bolan culture in the VII millennium B.C., the Sofia area evolved when Danubians tribes inhabited the Slatina village and founded a Thracian reign destroyed centuris after by Philip II king of Macedonia. In III century B.C., the Celts tribe of Serdi settled and rebuilt the city whose name had been conserved by the Romans, when conquered and founded Serdica in I century B.C., making it a strategic point on the ancient roman Militaris way starting from Singidunum (Belgrade) to end in Perinthus on the Aegean Sea.

Originary Sofia was a castra of the Roman Respublica, inhabited by locals tribes and Italics legionaries: within the reform of Augustus (see Roman Empire), Sofia was included in the Traciae province near the Iskar river and many mineral springs and termal fonts, dominating the valley surrounded by the Balkan mountains at North. At the time of the emperor Trajan Sofia got protective walls, public baths, administrative and cult buildings, a civic basilica, an amphitheatre, a big circus (theatre), the City council (Boulé), a large forum, so that the civitas expanded and became a significant political-economical centre, among the first Roman cities where Christianity was recognised as an official religion under emperor Galerius, who was born in Sofia.

With the reform of Constantine I (see Christian Empire), Sofia became capital of the imperial Diocesi Moesia cause of its great christian community and in 343 A.D. hosted a Christianity council in the place where centuries after had been built the Church of Santa Sofia. Destroyed in a raid by the Huns of Attila, the civitas was rebuilt by the emperor Justinian I and surrounded with great fortress walls whose remnants can still be seen today, while Sofia was elevated to capital of the Thema Bulgaria under the rule of basileius Heraclius I.

Things changed at early IX century A.D. when the Bulgars conquered and annected Sofia to the Bulgarians Empire: the civitas lost the political power but emerged as administrative and cultural centre, when St. Kliment Ohridski founded the first higher educational institution of public teaching activities in Bulgaria, becoming an important spiritual and literary hub, seat of a great Patriarchate with a cluster of 14 monasteries in its vicinity built when the Bulgars converted to Ortodox Church after decades of fight against the Byzantine Empire. A situation endured until late XIV century A.D. when the Turks conquered the city and destroyed every christian building, even with the multicoloured sgraffito ceramics, jewellery and ironware local production: for 5 centuries Sofia has been an important administrative center of the Ottoman Sultanat, capital of the beylerbeylik of Rumelia, the province that administered all the muslim lands in Europe (the Balkanic area), and of the Sanjak including the whole Thrace with Plovdiv and Thessaloniki.

After the battle of Varna (1444 A.D.), a site in Bulgaria where the Turks defeated a christian army of Slavs and Magyars, Sofia suffered persecutions for decades and many inhabitants had been sainted like George 'the New', Sophronius of Sofia, George 'the Newest', Nicholas of Sofia and Terapontius of Sofia, while different population consisted of Muslims, Greek speaking Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Georgians, Ragusans, Jews (Romaniote, Ashkenazi and Sephardi) and Romani people were deported in the city and 8 Friday mosques, 3 synagogues and the largest bedesten (market) of the Balkans were built.

Under Ottomans dominion Sofia entered a period of economic and political decadence, so in early 19th century began the Bulgarian revolutionary movement under Vasil Levski who established a revolutionary committee in the city. At the end of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 A.D. Sofia was relieved and proposed as a capital of the new Kingdom of Bulgaria by Marin Drinov, historian and philologist writing on the National Revival and living in the city: then most mosques in Sofia were destroyed in that war and majority of the muslim population left the city that experienced large population growth, mainly by inmigration from the Principalities of Romania.

During the Second World War, Sofia was bombed by the Allied airforces and as a consequence thousands of buildings were destroyed or damaged including the Capital Library and thousands of books. In 1944 A.D. Sofia was occupied by the Soviets 'Red Army' (U.R.S.S.) and the communist Fatherland Front took power: the transformation into the People's Republic of Bulgaria marked significant changes in the city's appearance, the population of Sofia expanded rapidly due to migration from rural regions and new residential areas were built in the outskirts of the city, like Druzhba, Mladost and Lyulin, while the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum (where his body had been preserved in a similar way to the Lenin mausoleum) was demolished in 1999 A.D. at the romanian communist regime fall.

Nowadays Sofia is largest city and the capital of Bulgaria and of the Sofia district and Sofia city adm., situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. A number of ancient Roman, Byzantine and medieval Bulgarian buildings are preserved in the centre of the city, included the 4th century Rotunda of St. George, dominated by the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the walls of the Serdica fortress, the partially preserved Amphitheatre of Serdica and the modern palaces ordered by the first king Alexander Battenberg to architects from Austrian-Hungarian Empire to shape the new capital's architectural appearance. So that the Sofia's centre style is thus a combination of Neo-Baroque, Neo-Rococo, Neo-Renaissance and Neoclassicism, with the 'Wien Secession' also later playing an important part, giving it a most typically Central European. The medieval Boyana Church is a UNESCO World Heritage site, containing realistic frescoes, depicting more than 240 human images and a total 89 scenes. The patron of the city is the roman martyr Saint Sofia who gave name to it.

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