Руската църква в София и нейните посетители
The Russian church in Sofia and its visitors

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses one of the most popular sacred sites in present day Bulgaria, the shrine of St. Nicholas of Myra the Wonderworker, known also as the ‘Russian Church”, situated in the centre of the capital Sofia. After giving brief information about the history of the shrine and the biography of the holy man Arcbishop Serraphim Sobolev (1881–1950) who was buried there I focus on the visitors of the place: Russian and other emigrants, Bulgarian parishioners, pilgrims, tourists. The accent is on the holy site as a place where different communities and groups meet with their specific needs, attitudes and practices. I delineate the diverse functions of the church for the different types of visitors: it emerges as a marker of ethnicity, a center of local veneration, a pilgrimage site and a tourist attraction. With its dynamism and openness to differences, a sacred site of this kind seems most adequate in the context of a big multicultural city in modern times. If we add to that the charismatic figure of the near saint, who is present there physically and, according to believers, also spiritually, we could explain why this place comes to be emblematic for the urban religious culture of contemporary Bulgaria.

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