Description of the attraction
The Church of St. Marina is located in the south of the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. This is perhaps the most significant Orthodox church in the city. The first religious buildings on this site appeared in the period of antiquity.
Around the fifth century, there was a small church dedicated to the Apostle Paul, which was destroyed a century later. Since then, the building of the temple has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt again. The last time the reconstruction was carried out in the middle of the 19th century, which is called the period of the Bulgarian national revival.
The building of the church is a basilica made of rough stone, the lower part of which is surrounded by an arcade with columns along the perimeter, this gives the temple a resemblance to Byzantine religious architecture. Also not far from the main building there is a six-story seventeen-meter wooden bell tower that has no analogues in Bulgaria.
In the interior of the temple, the most interesting is the iconostasis, about 21 meters high, which depicts biblical subjects and creatures. On the sides of the iconostasis there are images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, created by the Bulgarian master Stanislav Dospevsky.
The picturesque architecture and the atmosphere of antiquity surrounding the temple made this place very popular among both Christian pilgrims and ordinary tourists.
