By the time of the Liberation

By the time of the Liberation, some fifty years later, there were twelve new churches in Plovdiv. Eight of them have survived on the Three Hills today in a comparatively good state of preservation. They are the St. Marina Metropolitan Church, the Holy Virgin Cathedral, the churches of the SS. Constantine and Helena, of Sveta Nedelya with its St. Presentation of the Virgin Chapel, of St. Nikola, St. Petka and St. Dimiter. The Armenian Apostolic Church of St. Kevork (St. George) built in 1828 should also be mentioned, as it is located within the Old Town.

The Revival Orthodox churches in the Old Town were created by some of the most outstanding figures of the Bulgarian schools of architecture, woodcarving and painting of that period. The construction work was commissioned to renowned masters of the Bratsigovo School. The iconostases were carved by masters of the illustrious Debar School of woodcarving and to masters from Metsovo in Epirus.

The iconography was executed by icon-painters of the Samokov and Adrianople Schools of painting and abounds in creations by such famous artists as Zahari Zograf, his elder brother Dimiter Zofraf and the latter’s son Stanislav Dospevski, by Nicola Odrinchanin and others. The major part of the Revival churches in Plovdiv belongs to the common at the time architectural type of the three-aisle pseudo-basilica. After the Crimean War (1853 -1856) when the restrictions imposed by the Ottoman authorities were suspended, the first bell-towers and domed basilicas appeared in Plovdiv travel bulgaria.

ST. MARINA METROPOLITAN CHURCH

Plovdiv Diocese and its ecclesiastical administration represented by the Plovdiv Orthodox Bishopric have a long history. They were established at the beginning of the New Era, as early as the middle of the 1st c. as a result of the evangelizing activity of Apostle Erm, who was sent to Thrace by Apostle Paul himself.The first Christian community in the Thracian lands appeared in Plovdiv. This explains why the ecclesiastical authority of the eparchy founded subsequently was set up here. For centuries on end the seat of the eparchy – the Plovdiv Orthodox Bishopric was housed below the rocky southern slopes of Taxim Tepe. In mediaeval times, even before the Ottoman invasion, the metropolitan church was devoted to the martyr St. Marina.

The temple was demolished and rebuilt on numerous occasions. In 1851 it had to be raised from its very foundations. At that time some of the restrictions on the construction of Christian churches were suspended, and it was possible to erect a much more imposing and befitting temple. The church was built by masters headed by Nicola Tomchev-Ustabashiiski of the Bratsigovo School of construction, a man known far beyond the boundaries of Thrace. The temple is designed in the style of the spacious and imposing pseudo-basilicas of the Revival Period. Inside, seven pairs of slender columns crowned by a polyhedral dome divide it into three aisles. To add to the solemn effect, a colonnade encircles the narthex on the western side.