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On the southern side of Ploshtad Sveta Nedelya, an ochre building with attractive red and green tiling houses both the Theology Faculty and, on the first floor, the Church Historical Museum (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 2-5pm; US$1), a collection of icons, ceremonial priestly robes, bejewelled crosses and incense holders. The best of Bulgaria's religious art is found elsewhere - notably in the National History Museum, or the crypt of the Aleksandar Nevski memorial church. Highlights include two sixteenth-century icons (a Virgin and Child and a Crucifixion ) from the Black Sea town of Sozopol, which remained an important icon-painting centre throughout the Ottoman occupation; and some pafti (women's belt buckles) engraved with the forms of saints Dimitar and George. Round the corner as you head east along ul. Saborna, a low door leads down into the subterranean Chapel of Sveta Petka Paraskeva , a medieval foundation now dwarfed beneath turn-of-the-century buildings. Built in the thirteenth century by Tsar Kaloyan as a palace chapel, it's central Sofia's most atmospheric church, crammed with daytime shoppers muttering prayers or planting candles next to the icons. Alongside icons of Sveta Petka herself are powerful depictions of warrior-saints George, Dimitar and Mina (a fourth-century Egyptian known in the West as Menas), powerful personifications of spiritual strength in the face of adversity which have long been important to Balkan Christians. Special prayers and requests for divine intervention are scribbled onto slips of paper, which are then posted into a box which sits beside the icon of St Mina.
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