Unusual and secret places in and around Sofia.

There are various travel guides and blog articles where you can find information on what to see and what to visit in the city of Sofia. In our own blog you will also find tourist information about Sofia.

But in this article we are going to discuss the possibility of visiting the city of Sofia and its surroundings from another point of view.: getting to know unusual places, secrets, or little known, and that they do not appear in the usual tourist guides but that do not mean that they are not of great interest to the traveler who visits Sofia.. It also sometimes happens that due to lack of time or ignorance, visitors to the city of Sofia do not visit places on the outskirts of the center of Sofia., even though there are places that deserve displacement… Here we recommend some of these little-known places:

Crocodile Head Fountain.

The town of Bosnek is located 45 km southwest of Sofia, on the southern slopes of Vitosha Mountain. From the end of the town, a marked trail leads to a spring from which springs spring water from the mountain, this font is called “Living Water Fountain”.
The fountain springs from a crocodile-shaped stone head, carved by a stonemason from a nearby village.
Is named “living water source” because the source “late”, that is to say, the water gushes and stops intermittently as if it gushed from a living heart… In addition, its mineral water is considered curative and people from all over the country come here seeking help and healing..
This place has been of interest since ancient times. In the 17th century for example, the famous ottoman traveler and explorer “Evliyá Çelebí” I call her “the source of happiness”.

Bosnek Fountain “hidden” on the Vitosha mountain

According to legend, the source has the magical ability to recognize the righteous and the unworthy at the same time, and the water stops when an unworthy person approaches it.
According to other ancient stories, on the mountain where the source is there was a lake where a bull lived, that when submerged in the lake the level rose and allowed water to flow to the source, and when the bull came out to the ground the fountain stopped sprouting….the truth is that even today the mystery of the pulses of the “living water source” has not been resolved…

Restaurante Pod Lipite

We have no commercial relationship with this restaurant, We recommend it because it is simply our favorite in the city of Sofia and because not being in the center of Sofia many travelers do not know it, most of them stay in the surroundings of Vitosha Boulevard where there are multiple restoration options and they miss it. Pod Lipite restaurant (in Spanish: “Under the lime trees”) it is located on Elin Pelin street, 1, beware of browsers because there is also a small town just outside Sofia with this name…

The restaurant is located in an old classic building renovated as a restaurant, walking through its door we enter an environment that takes us to the old taverns of Bulgaria for its decoration and style. There are several small rooms, cozy, quiet, with the right lighting. A large grill of coals in sight will surprise us in one of the nooks and crannies of the restaurant and in Summer its small terrace with tables “under the linden trees” it is an ideal place to have lunch or dinner…

Interior del restaurant Pod Glued

It is one of those traditional restaurants where when you sit down they give you a menu with solid wood tapas and you think: “here I will eat better than a priest”… and so it is, the food is typical bulgarian but it has some very tasty recipes not found elsewhere, I recommend the rabbit in sauce and the nettle soup (similar to spinach, nettles is very typical of Bulgaria but is made at home and is difficult to find in restaurants in Sofia), etc…

The waiter service is very professional. It is not a cheap restaurant but it is on the same level as the best known restaurants in the Center of Sofia. If you want to surprise your partner, relatives , friends or traveling companions the experience of this restaurant is authentic Bulgarian and deserves to move a little from the central almond of Sofia for it.

Terrace Restaurant Pod Lipite

Kremikovtsi Monastery.

Located at 23 km north of Sofia city, you can visit this peculiar orthodox monastery. Of course it is not as famous as the Rila Monastery which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, within its walls it keeps valuable secrets, for example here you can see some ancient miraculous icons, the icons are the religious images of saints, virgins, etc. painted on wooden support typical of the orthodox christian religion. The icons of the Kremikovtsi Monastery differ from the more modern ones in that the part that is painted is reduced to the faces of the images and the rest of the icon is carved on metal., it is as if the images were covered by metal garments, leaving only the faces as a painted part. The rest of the orthodox icons that you are going to see in the country are completely painted on wood., Very few, in some museum they are of this type…

The Kremikovtsi Monastery is located on a hillside with impressive views towards the city of Sofia, it has a picnic area with tables for lunch with views of Sofia and the Vitosha mountain. Ideal to know an orthodox monastery and feel the only visitor amidst the tranquility and calm of the monastic atmosphere.

It also has valuable mural frescoes inside the old church, similar to those of the Boyana Church in Sofia and being a Unesco World Heritage it is much more visited than that of Kremikovtsi. But if you want to avoid queues, you wait and pay entrance (Boyana Church has museum category and you have to pay 5 € / person), so we recommend you visit the Kremikovtsi.

Mural fresco paintings inside the Kremikovtsi Church

National Polytechnic Museum (Sofia Museum of Technology).

For travelers interested in visiting museums in Sofia there are many proposals like in most European capitals. Perhaps the most important museum in Sofia is the National Historical Museum that shows the golden treasure of Panaguiúrishte, unique in the world for its age (3rd century B.C.) and volume of pieces (6,146 kg of pure gold), plus many other Thracian finds, Romans, Byzantines, etc… and a representation of folk costumes.

However for this article we want to mention the National Polytechnic Museum, Located on the street “Opalchenska” 66, 1303 Sofia Center, Sofia, a 10 minutes walk from the central Vitosha Boulevard, main street of downtown Sofia. It is a museum hidden among residential buildings and little frequented by tourists because it is not in the usual transit areas but it is very interesting to visit.. The Museum contains a collection of more than 1000 artifacts showing the development of science and technology in Bulgaria over decades, for example among some of them we can mention a ” Knife smith KR 174″ it was a car 3 German-made wheels of 1953, a Ford “A” from 1928, a wooden bicycle 1880, an old solar powered bicycle, old machinery for the production of the famous bulgarian rose oil, old phones manufactured by the Siemens brand in 1930, the first calculator in the world that could make square roots and that was made in Bulgaria, model “ELKA 6521” , and more, many other curious objects…

Sofia National Polytechnic Museum

Despite being a picturesque museum, it is little known. If we visit it during the week we will be able to coincide perhaps with a schoolboy excursion and nothing more, but on weekends they will open the rooms for us alone… The entrance fee is barely 3 € and children under 7 years is free. Open from Monday to Saturday from 9:00 a 17:00 h.

Crypt of the Church of Saint Sophia.

Hagia Sophia Church is the church next to the impressive Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Due to the spectacular nature of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, it is usually overshadowed, although all visitors pass by.. First of all, we must know that the Church of Saint Sofia is one of the oldest in Sofia, and in fact on behalf of the city of Sofia it is due to this church. It resides on Christian temples from the 4th century and during the Ottoman era it even had a minaret that was later lost due to an earthquake.

But the reason for being on this list of unusual and secret places in Sofia is her crypt. Hardly anyone knows that under the church floor there is a crypt that is open to the public as a museum and where you can see dozens of ancient masonry tombs dating from Roman times., IV century, the tombs have a curious vaulted brick construction, there is a total of 56. In addition you can see one of the best preserved Roman mosaics in the world representing floral and animal motifs in full color. The vivid colors of this mosaic are maintained over time, unlike those that suffer from the elements in other parts of the world, so it is worth entering this Crypt-Museum just to see this beautiful mosaic. The entrance to the church is free and for the Crypt-Museum they are 3 € / person.

Church of Santa Sofia with its secrets in the basement

River stones.

Of course, as nature lovers, a natural phenomenon could not be missing from our list of unusual and secret places. For Bulgarian hikers it is a well known place but for other visitors it may not. Thus, If you like nature and have time for an excursion near the city of Sofia, We recommend you visit the natural phenomenon of “river of stones”. It is the bed of a river that is covered by large stones of “sienita” (a rock on the sea floor), the river is barely visible under the stones, if we look at it from a distance, it is an accumulation of large blocks of natural stone that are spread out elongated among the forest of the Vitosha mountain for more than 1 kilometer long, giving the impression of being a “river of stones”. In Bulgarian they have called it “the golden bridges”, O “Golden Bridges” Because many of these rocks are covered with yellow lichens that illuminated by the Sun give the appearance of “golden bridges” that allow you to cross the river without touching the water…

The place is located on the North slope of the Vitosha mountain, neighbor to the city of Sofia. It is accessed by a mountain road from the Boyana neighborhood., where the famous Boyana Church is located (UNESCO World Heritage). The place impresses with the picturesque and beautiful landscape, huge stone blocks, many the size of a large car, among a lush fir forest, birches and other tree species. Furthermore, this point is one of the most frequent starting places to climb up to the Pico Negro (Cherni Vrah a 2290 meters), the distance of this trekking is 8,5 km, which are exceeded in approximately 2 h. 30 min.

The origin of the natural phenomenon of the river of stones is doubtful, there are two theories. The first says that it is of glacial origin due to the sliding of glaciers at the end of the Quaternary (ice Age). And the second is that its origin is the result of the breaking of stone plates into large blocks that over time, due to erosion, they took a spherical shape… In any case the place and its great extension is impressive…