The 7 day circuit to Bulgaria -The morning of day 5 (National History Museum - Boyana, Sofia) - the 16th of June 2011

We headed towards Vitosha mountain to visit one of the largest Museums on the Balcans housed in a former comunist leader's residence in  Boyana, at the foot of the mountain. The Museum's collections comprise artifacts from the  first Pre-Historic settlements through to the National Revival Period.

Under the guidance of a Museum expert we walked around huge rooms holding  an innumerable amount of "treasures" for what looked like "centuries" of history in two hours. These covered the Greeks, Romans, First Bulgarian kingdom in the Middles Ages and the Byzantines, though the most spectacular were the unique god treasures from Panagyurishte and the Thracian silver objects.

Cult scene  from the village of Ovcharovo, illustrating the beliefs in the Great Goddess Mother and the Three Great Goddesses of the three seasonal  animal breeding-agricultural cycle in Thrace; end of the 5th millennium BC.

5200 BC - 5000 BC - Necropolis at the "Golemiya Ostrov", Dobrich. An erect female figure with cylindrical head.

A Great Thracian Goddess. A greave from the barrow "Mogilanskla Mogila", city of Vratsa; third quarter of the 4th century BC.

(To be continued)