Boyana Church

The frescoes of 1259 are the treasure of Boyana Church, on the wooded edge of Sofia — a cycle of strikingly lifelike portraits and biblical scenes that places the little church among Europe's great stores of medieval painting. The building itself grew in three stages: a 10th-century east church, a two-storey addition raised by Sebastocrator Kaloyan in the early 13th century, and a final wing from the early 19th. UNESCO listed Boyana on the World Heritage roll in 1979.