The battle to preserve Sofia’s ancient sites

[Aurelia]

 

TRACES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Plastic foil covers the remains of Roman-era walls, while a raised concrete road skirts the rich remains of Serdika, a Roman city in the soil under modern Sofia, Bulgaria. In the background: Sveta Nedelya, a major Orthodox Christian church.

 

It is a sad prospect: the ruins of ancient Roman mansions and bath-houses are overgrown in thick weeds, while slimy ponds have formed in the hollows left by archaeological excavations.

 

This site in today’s Bulgaria was a city block that exuded wealth in Roman times. Today it exudes neglect. During the rainy summer of 2014, the authorities took no action to pump the water and mud out. There is no archaeologist anywhere to be seen.

 

“That’s an eco-reservation,” jokes a teenager passing by the excavation.

 

It’s not as if it were some archaeological site in a remote region, such as the Rhodopes mountains of eastern Bulgaria. In fact, the erstwhile Roman city of Serdika lies in the heart of the capital Sofia.

 

“Serdika is my Rome,” was the remark of Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who ruled from 306 to 337, about his favourite city.

 

Constantine only left Serdika when he decided to make the city named after him, Constantinople — today’s Istanbul — into the capital of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire.

 

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