Sofia

People have lived around the hot springs at the foot of Vitosha for about 7,000 years. The city takes its ancient name, Serdica, from the Serdi, a tribe of Thracian or Celtic origin, whom the Roman general Crassus subdued around 29 BC. Serdica became a municipium under the Emperor Trajan, a stop on the Via Militaris between Singidunum and Byzantium, and later the capital of the province of Dacia Mediterranea, with walls, baths, an amphitheatre and a large forum. The emperors Aurelian and Galerius were born here, and in 311 Galerius issued in Serdica the Edict of Toleration that ended the persecution of Christians.

Raided by Huns, Visigoths, Avars and Slavs as Roman power declined, the city was taken into the First Bulgarian Empire by Khan Krum in 809 and became Sredets. Byzantium ruled it from 1018 until 1194, and under the Second Bulgarian Empire it was a major administrative and literary centre. By the 14th century it was being called Sofia, after the Saint Sofia Church. The Ottomans took it after a siege in the 1380s, and from 1530 to 1836 it was the capital of Rumelia Eyalet, with Friday mosques, libraries and the largest covered market in the Balkans.

By the time Russian troops under Iosif Gurko entered on 4 January 1878, the population had fallen to 11,649. On 3 April 1879 Sofia was chosen as the capital of the new Bulgarian state, and it grew rapidly as migrants arrived from the countryside. Allied bombing in 1943–44 destroyed thousands of buildings, and from 1944 a communist government rebuilt the city and ringed it with large housing estates such as Druzhba, Mladost and Lyulin. After 1989 the old street names returned, and new business districts and glass office towers followed.

Sofia likes to call its centre the 'triangle of religious tolerance': Sveta Nedelya Church, the Banya Bashi Mosque and the Sofia Synagogue stand within a few minutes' walk of one another, and the gold domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral rise nearby. The city is the seat of the government and of many of the country's universities and national institutions, and its cultural life is the busiest in Bulgaria. The Ivan Vazov National Theatre is the oldest and most authoritative theatre in the country, and the National Opera and Ballet, founded in 1891, launched singers such as Nicolai Ghiaurov and Ghena Dimitrova.

The National Gallery brings together the old royal palace, the foreign-art collection at Kvadrat 500 and a contemporary art space, while the Boyana Film studios, once the centre of the national film industry, now host international productions. The Sofia International Film Festival has filled the city's cinemas every March since 1997. Sofia was the European Capital of Sport in 2018, and football is followed with passion: CSKA, Levski, Lokomotiv and Slavia, clubs built up in the communist era, all play here, and their rivalries run through the city.

The countryside around the capital is Shopluk, home of the Shopi, who speak the Western Bulgarian dialects. On 1 March people pin red-and-white martenitsa tokens to one another's clothes for health and spring, and as elsewhere in Bulgaria a shake of the head often means 'yes' and a nod 'no'.

About 1.4 million people lived in the city in 2018, and about 1.5 million in the whole Sofia Capital Municipality. Sofia is the economic hub of Bulgaria, home to the National Bank, the stock exchange and most large Bulgarian and international companies, and it has the highest wages in the country. Its IT sector ranges from multinationals to startups, clustered in office parks such as Business Park Sofia and Sofia Tech Park. Sofia University, founded in 1888, the Technical University, New Bulgarian University and the Medical University make it the country's main student city.

Most residents live in apartment buildings: the older blocks of the centre and districts such as Oborishte, and the large estates of the communist decades on the outskirts. Car ownership grew rapidly in the 1990s, with more than a million cars registered in the city since 2002, traffic is heavy, and the metro, which opened in 1998 with five stations and now has four lines, has become the backbone of the daily commute.

Air pollution is the most discussed local problem: the mountains around the valley trap smog during winter inversions, and the European Commission has taken Bulgaria to court over it. At weekends many residents head up Vitosha, which rises straight above the southern districts, to walk in summer and ski in winter.

Sofia eats much as the rest of western Bulgaria does, plainly and well. Breakfast is often banitsa from a neighbourhood bakery: filo pastry layered with whisked eggs, yoghurt and white brined cheese, baked and eaten hot or cold with yoghurt, ayran or boza, a thick, slightly sour fermented grain drink with very little alcohol. Shopska salad, diced tomato, cucumber and pepper under grated white sirene cheese, takes its name from Shopluk, the Shopi country around Sofia, and often starts a meal with a glass of rakia, the fruit brandy.

In the taverns known as mehanas the menu runs to bean soup (bob chorba), grilled minced-meat kebapche and kyufte, stuffed peppers and vegetable stews cooked in clay pots, with yoghurt on the side and Bulgarian red wine from the Thracian valley or the Struma valley around Melnik.

For produce, the Central Sofia Market Hall, opened in 1911 on Maria Luiza Boulevard and known simply as Halite, has stalls under one roof, while the Women's Market near Pirotska Street is its counterpart. Vitosha Boulevard, the main commercial street, is lined with shops, restaurants and bars.