Description of the attraction
The Church of the Holy Week is an Orthodox cathedral in the city of Sofia, named after the Holy Great Martyr Week.
There is little information about the early history of the temple. Presumably, the first church on this site was erected in the 10th century - a wooden building stood on a stone foundation. Until the middle of the 19th century, the church, unlike other temples in the city, still remained wooden. At the end of the 19th century, there was a massive fire and the old building, damaged in the fire, was dismantled in order to build a new one in its place. Then the present cathedral was erected.
Since the 18th century, the church has been declared a cathedral. Changes also affected its name: due to the fact that the remains of the King of Serbia Stephen II were brought here, it was named the Church of the Holy King. The temple was renamed only at the end of the 19th century.
The Church of the Holy Week is an imposing structure, initially reaching 35.5 meters in length and 19 in width. Its construction took six years (partly due to the devastating earthquake that occurred in 1858) - from 1856 to 1963. The bell tower was built a little later - in 1879. It contained 8 bells donated to the new church by Prince Dondukov-Korsakov.
The church acquired its modern look after a large-scale reconstruction carried out in the 20-30s. last century - in 1925 a bomb exploded here and killed more than 200 people. Under the leadership of architects Tsolov and Vasiliev, a new building of the temple was erected in the neo-Byzantine style. The current dimensions of the building are 30x15.5 meters, the height of the main dome reaches 31 meters.
The interior of the church is decorated with frescoes painted from 1971 to 1973 by a group of artists under the direction of Nikolai Rostovtsev. One of the main values of the temple is the gilded iconostasis made by the outstanding master Stanislav Dospevsky.
