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From a stop near the corner of Sofronii Vrachanski and Rozova Dolina in Kazanlak, you can catch bus #6 out to Shipka village, a rustic huddle of buildings a little way off the main road to the pass. From the wooded hillside rise the gold onion domes of the Shipka Memorial Church (daily 8.30am-4.30pm), built by the Czech architect Tomisko after the Liberation as a monument to both Russian and Bulgarian dead, and finally consecrated in 1902. Conceived by philanthropic Russian aristocrats and financed by public donations, the edifice was modelled on Muscovite churches of the seventeenth century. The church is a vibrantly coloured confection of pinks and greens, topped off with a fifty-metre-high spire on the bell tower. Its interior , the work of Bulgarian artists under the direction of the Russian painter Pomerantsev, is perhaps the best example of the academic realist style that flourished in Bulgaria around the turn of the century. Folk-influenced floral and geometric patterns rich in primary colours weave their way around naturalistic depictions of Bulgarian saints and tsars. Many of them are dressed in Byzantine costume, a reminder of the pre-World War I days when Bulgaria's desire to extend its frontiers towards the former imperial capital was reflected in a passion for all things Byzantine. At the western end of the church, murals portray great figures from Russian history, including the fourteenth-century ruler Dmitri Donskoi being blessed before going off to smite the Tatars, and an allegorical scene of Cyril and Methodius bringing literacy to the Slavs
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