Sofia

Bulgaria

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, stands on the site of Roman Serdica. The edict of toleration issued there in 311 by the emperor Galerius was the first to legalise Christianity, and a church council met in the city in 343. After centuries of Ottoman rule, Sofia became the capital of the new Bulgarian state in 1879. Its mainly Sephardic Jewish community opened the Sofia Synagogue, one of the largest in Europe, in 1909. Modern figures linked to the city include the Russian émigré theologian Georges Florovsky, whose family settled there in 1920, and Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, who served as papal envoy to Bulgaria in the 1920s and 1930s.

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