Sofia

Sofia, the capital since 1878 of the principality of Bulgaria, stands in a broad valley of the Balkans, beside the railway connecting Constantinople with Belgrade and Vienna. The city since 1891 has undergone thorough reconstruction, most of the crooked dirty streets, with their tumble-down houses and ruinous mosques, of the old Turkish city being demolished to make way for broad tree-planted boulevards, with paved sidewalks and electric-light posts, new French-looking houses, shops and hotels, and large public buildings (baths, national library, banks, post-office, &c.). The principal streets converge upon the new government palace. For centuries the place has been renowned for its hot mineral springs (117° F.). Sofia is the seat of a metropolitan of the Greek Church, and of the national university. There is a considerable trade in hides, spirits, maize, and wheat. Pop. (1870) 19,000; (1895) 47,500, of whom two-thirds were Bulgarians, and about 5000 Jews (originally emigrants from Spain). Sofia is the Serdica of the Romans, and was the seat of a famous church council in 343. Attila plundered it; and it was in the possession of the Bulgarians from the beginning of the 9th century until its capture by the Turks in 1382. Both Hunyady and the Albanian chief Mustapha Pasha (in 1829) utterly devastated the place, and it was occupied by the Russians under General Gourko in January 1878. See Contemporary, April 1891.