National Archaeological Museum, Sofia

The National Archaeological Museum occupies the former Great Mosque of Sofia, a domed fifteenth-century Ottoman building in the city centre. Its galleries gather Bulgaria's finest antiquities, from Thracian gold and silver treasures to Roman sculpture and medieval church art. Prehistoric idols, funerary monuments, and inscriptions fill the vaulted halls beneath the mosque's original domes. As the oldest museum institution in the country, it presents the deep layers of civilisation on Bulgarian soil in one atmospheric historic building.