Boyana Church
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How it came to be
The Boyana Church on the outskirts of Sofia was built in three stages. The oldest part, the eastern church, is a small cross-vaulted church of the late 10th or early 11th century. In the mid-13th century the sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava added a two-storey building beside it, a family tomb below and a chapel above.
The church owes its fame to its wall paintings of 1259, laid over older ones. They include 18 scenes from the life of St Nicholas and portraits of the donors Kaloyan and Desislava and of Tsar Constantine Tikh and Tsaritsa Irina, and they are among the best-preserved medieval paintings in the Balkans.
The western part was added in the mid-19th century with gifts from the local community. The church was closed for conservation in 1954, inscribed in 1979, and fully reopened to the public on 2 October 2008.
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