The Shipka Memorial Church is the most beautiful church in Bulgaria that you’ve probably never heard of (or at least never visited). It’s easy to miss compared to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral that is conspicuously located in the heart of downtown Sofia. Nestled discreetly in a small grove of trees at the foothills of the Central Balkan mountains, I had driven by it three or four times before I even realized it was there. One time, on the way from the Shipka Pass to the nearby town of Kazanlak, I saw one of the church’s shiny golden domes peeking out of the trees in my rear-view mirror.
View of the church’s façade and onion domes from the northern part of the garden
If you give a Bulgarian man some grapes, he’ll want to make wine. After he drinks the wine, he’ll want to use the pressed and fermented remains of the grapes to make a traditional brandy called rakia. This is easily the most famous cliché about Bulgaria, but in my experience it’s not that far from the truth.
Much of modern-day Bulgaria and Northern Greece was inhabited by loosely organized Thracian tribes during the first millennium or so before Christ. Legend has it that they have made wine along the banks of the Maritsa river for the last 5,000 years. The ancient Greek poet Homer partially corroborates this in his epics written around 800 BCE. From The Iliad:
