After Sofia was chosen for the capital of the newly independent Bulgaria, architects from Central Europe were commissioned to work on the new capital. In the course of a few decades Sofia turned into a distinctively European city that its ever-increasing inhabitants lovingly called “the little Vienna.”

Museums

The oldest and largest museums in Bulgaria can be found in Sofia. The worldwide famous Thracian gold and silver treasures discovered through excavations in the Bulgarian lands, and many others originating from the Hellenistic, Roman and Middle Ages as well can be seen in the National Museum of History located in Boyana Quarter, at the skirts of Mount Vitosha, and in the Archaeological Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences on Alexander I Square.