Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church

The Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church  and formerly The Black Mosque is a Bulgarian Orthodox church in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It was created in 1547 as an Ottoman mosque later converted into orthodox Church, and was inaugurated on 27 July 1903. The church is named after Cyril and Methodius and their five disciples, known in the Orthodox Church collectively as the Sedmochislenitsi.

The Black Mosque was commissioned by Sofu Mehmed Pasha, former governor-general of Rumelia, to Mimar Sinan.  It was constructed at the place of a former nunnery of the Rila Monastery and an Early Christian temple from the 4th-5th century, the ruins of which were excavated in 1901. An even older construction, a pagan temple of Asclepius from Roman Serdica, was also discovered in the mosque's foundations.

The mosque received its more popular name, the Black Mosque, after the dark granite from which its minaret was made. The minaret collapsed during an earthquake in the 19th century and the mosque was abandoned by the Ottomans after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 to become used as a military warehouse and prison.

The architect who suggested the conversion of the once Ottoman mosque into a Christian church was the Russian Alexander Pomerantsev, responsible for the Upper Trade Rows on Red Square, among other buildings. The Bulgarian architects Yordan Milanov and Petko Momchilov designed the dome, the narthex and the bell tower in a traditional Bulgarian style, inspired by the movement of Romanticism. Only the central hall and the dome of the former mosque were preserved, with four oval bays, a narthex and an altar section being added.

The construction works took a year, between 27 May 1901 and 6 May 1902, but the complete inner decoration did not finish until 1996. Young artists painted the icons and among the first donors were Tsar Ferdinand and Ivan Evstratiev Geshov.

Address
Graf Ignatiev 25, Sofia, Bulgaria

Established
1547/1901