Cruise Through History - Itinerary 04 - Ports of the Black Sea: Ports of the Black Sea

Nessebar: Most Churches Per Capita

Among cities of the Black Sea, with long Byzantine Eastern Orthodox traditions, Nessebar, Bulgaria stands out as having so many streets filled with churches for its small size, that per capita it has more than any other. Located on the western Black Sea coast, so close to the channel from the Aegean Sea, it is not surprising that this city was one of the first founded by Greeks in the sixth century BCE, or that so near the capital of Byzantium, it should be a leading center of Eastern Orthodoxy from the sixth century CE. Bulgaria today stretches inland to the north of Greece.

What comes as a surprise to the visitor, is the number, size, quality of preservation, and detailed ornamentation of such a large number of early Byzantine era churches in one small city area. The old city of Nessebar holds its story in stone streets and high stone walls. Forty Byzantine Orthodox churches survive there today.

Byzantine architecture, found all across the region from Russia through Greece and Turkey, is easily recognized by stone and brick buildings, where so often rows of clay-red brick alternate with light brick or stone. Arches alternate red and white brick. In Nessebar, small churches are Byzantine works of art, typically in dual-color patterns, inlaid with painted ceramics.

Church-building advanced over centuries from one long nave, with a bulging end for the altar, and a simple pitched roof, to more intricate churches with side aisles and side chapels, with high, many-pitched roofs and a tower. In Nessebar, streets are an open-air museum of evolving style. Even a street fountain and some homes are built in the dual color Byzantine style.

In the center of the old city stands a remnant of the fifth century, a large, many arched Basilica of St. Sofia, or as sometimes known, Hagia Sofia, the beautiful church. Even assuming the outer walls evident today were built over centuries, up to the ninth century, to create side aisles in the church and accommodate a growing congregation, this is still a massive church, given the time it was built and size of the city. Certainly, the Hagia Sofia of Constantinople is far larger and of greater grandeur. It had the emperor of Byzantium as a patron and sits in what was the largest city of its time. Nessebar was an outpost of Greek civilization, yet it too had a grand church.

Exploring the old city of Nessebar, with interpretive signs on every square, and in unexpected places on side streets, noting the date and significance of a church, begs the question of why here are there so many churches of such fine quality. When the United Nations designated Nessebar a World Heritage City, the award was made noting the examples of structures over time, which display a history of Byzantine Orthodox churches. The city is an open-air museum, telling its story.

A Little History of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast

Nessebar has a population of less than fifteen thousand today, less than thirty thousand in the greater city area, despite having been continuously habituated for 2,600 years. It followed the historical path of its fellow cadre of Greek settlements from the sixth century BCE, established to feed Athens grain. The city, founded by people from Megara, now part of Athens, was known as Mesembria.

When Rome overtook Greece as master of the far empire, Romans came to Nessebar. Romans did not establish a great city with a large theatre as they often did elsewhere. They came late to Nessebar, probably in the first century BCE, when the Roman Empire was stretched thin from Britannia to Turkey. Often Romans enlarged Greek theatres with an elaborate stage. In Nessebar, the Greek into Roman ruin greets visitors from the docks. The site sits majestically overlooking the water, not as impressive as theaters in cities of the Aegean coasts, although impressive.

The high point of Nessebar came in the Christian era. The early Christian times of the sixth century to the medieval thirteenth century are amply represented in churches and houses. During the medieval period, a great wall was built around the city, with a fortress at the docks. In a city of great churches, the growth of trade spurred the need to protect residents within its wall.

Not surprisingly, Nessebar was an early city of trade. Sitting on the southwest corner of the Black Sea, easily accessible from the Danube to the north and land routes from Athens and Constantinople in the southeast and southwest, grain from Nessebar could travel by land or sea.

In the sixth century BCE, the usual means of trade was barter. In ancient times, where gold was plentiful, such as in northern Africa, certain goods like salt were weighed against gold. In Nessebar, gold was not an abundant commodity. Amber from the Baltic; spices, silk, and dried fruit from the east; and wine and olives from the south were exchanged for grain. A means to determine value in exchange was necessary, not dependent upon comparative weight.

Coins as the medium of trade began around the sixth century. Often Greeks are credited with the development of a standard value currency. Gold used as weights were often fashioned into standard-sized ingots. Those gold bits, flattened to heap on a scale, were made into stamped weights, in the name of a trading city or leader. They became coins of the realm. Historians of Nessebar give the city credit for the development and use of the first coins in the sixth century BCE. At that time, Nessebar was a Greek city and a major trade station. The attribution is credible. Coins have been found in Nessebar, stamped with the city emblem, dating to the fifth century BCE.

In the ancient Roman empire, Nessebar sat toward the northern edge of the Black Sea region, the extent of which was Varna. When the Roman empire split into regions, Nessebar was within the domain of Roman emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor. When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the realm, Nessebar became an early center of Christianity. Possessing great wealth from trade, from the fifth to the eleventh century, Nessebar built Byzantine churches. Building in Nessebar coincided with the growth in power of the First Bulgarian Empire.

In the seventh century, tribes in Bulgaria coalesced into a powerful army. So effective was the military, under a succession of leaders, that the Bulgar forces kept at bay the Hungarian Magyars from the west and Arabs from the south. The territory of the First Bulgarian Empire extended from the Adriatic Sea, with a capital at Ohrid, south into Macedonia, to the full western banks of the Black Sea at the Dnieper River. Bulgars controlled traffic on the Danube River.

In the tenth century, the Bulgarian Empire was Christian, and its cities were bastions of Christianity and church-building. Ambition overcame Christian ethos, and in 923, the Bulgars lay siege on Constantinople. They crushed the Byzantine army, although not fatally. In the next century, Byzantines staged a come-back. The once-mighty Bulgarian Empire surrendered to Byzantine might in 1018, ending the First Bulgarian Empire. Byzantium was at its height.

Ivan the Great and the Second Bulgarian Empire (1331-1371)

A Bulgarian Renaissance came in 1331, with the reign of Tsar Ivan Alexander. For forty years he ruled Bulgaria, in what has been dubbed the Second Bulgarian Empire. Not only did Ivan enable a time of peace and internal stability, but he also sponsored art and architecture. The fourteenth century was a time of construction of Byzantine churches throughout Bulgaria, notably in Nessebar.

Ivan began his reign by conquering territory lost to Byzantium. He arranged a peace treaty with Serbia, cemented by the marriage of his sister to the Serbian king. Serbia controlled what had been the western Bulgarian domain and its capital at Ohrid. Bulgaria held the land south of the Danube, and south along the Black Sea to the remaining area of European Byzantium, north and west of Constantinople. The total territory was less than the Bulgaria of the First Empire; however, it was stable, defensible, and still controlled lucrative trade from the Black Sea along the Danube.

Ivan Alexander fostered the arts in the creation of illustrated manuscripts in monasteries and painting. He was harsh on heretics, particularly several Christian sects, which existed during his reign, and fostered religious practice. As such, he is revered by the church and appears in church frescos of the middle ages. Church construction faltered during the later Ottoman era.

The economy of the empire surged during Ivan’s reign, in part due to his treaties with trading domains. He strengthened relations with Venice, Genoa and Ragusa, known today as Dubrovnik. After a prior doge of Venice waged a destructive campaign on Constantinople in 1204, Ivan was wise to maintain good relations with the successor doge.

The downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire was its continual battles with Byzantium over their common border. Fighting between the two leading Eastern Orthodox empires weakened both. As the Ottoman Empire came west, it was able to capitalize on weaknesses in Byzantium, nibbling away at its territory, until 1453, when Constantinople fell to Ottoman Turks.

After the death of Ivan Alexander in 1371, his son was unable to hold the empire together, despite decades of co-ruler status established by Ivan. Weakened by continual warfare, the Second Bulgarian Empire ended in 1371. When Byzantium fell, the Ottomans continued west. Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire until liberated in 1878. Nessebar was united within Bulgaria in 1885.

Building Churches in Nessebar

Ivan Alexander was an avid fan of building churches and monasteries. He is due the accolade of builder king for a large number of churches that were built during his forty-year reign. In Nessebar, he endowed two monasteries: The Holy Mother of God Eleoussa and St. Nicholas, both of which stand as monuments to the era. Also built during that time in Nessebar were St. Theodore, St. Paraskeva, St. Michael/St. Gabriel and St. John Aliturgetos. Bright frescos in some of these churches exist today. The exterior of the churches, although not large buildings, are exquisite in detail, with ornamental brick and imbedded, painted, ceramic pieces, creating a mosaic in brick and clay.

The architecture of the Second Bulgarian Empire is so distinctive in its unique style that it has been called the Tarnovo Artistic School of architecture.⁴ Tarnovo architecture is characterized by small churches, long and narrow, disproportionately high. They are dark places of penance.

The exterior of Tarnovo style churches is an explosion of artistic expression by builders in brick and stone. Tarnovo churches use arches in alternating red and white clay brick. The interior of churches had Greek-style columns, although more in use were internal arches of brick. Inside the churches are painted frescos. Outside the church, walls are studded with small ceramic cups and stars, to create designs solid in construction and fanciful in overall appearance. Tarnovo churches are like large shoe boxes, with ample false arches, ceramic trim designs, and few towers.

Exemplary of the Tarnovo Artistic School is the icon of Nessebar, the Church of Christ Pantocrator. The Church of Christ is larger than most churches in Nessebar, has a many-faceted roof of domes, a tower, and arches, and sits within a large garden. The church invites visitors.

Characteristic of the Tarnovo school in the Church of Christ is the use of brick design, at its most fanciful in Byzantine churches. The church is a riot of three levels of rows of arches, in descending height. Even the tower and vault above the altar are surrounded by small arches in alternating red and white. Although the Church of Christ is large by Tarnovo standards, it is long, narrow and high. Like all Tarnovo Orthodox churches, the entry door is on the west. There is a smaller door leading to the narthex, a small room at the back of the church.

The Church of Christ Pantocrator also has Moorish arches as exterior decoration around the rounded altar. The inclusion of Arab architectural elements is common in Bulgarian churches in the Second Empire. Even before the conquest of Bulgaria by the Ottoman Empire, Nessebar was an international city. Architectural styles were eclectic and Arab traders were frequent in town through its earliest history. Ceramic designs around arches and extended altars at the end of each church, rather than designs of a cross, are Arabic, or iconoclast touches, so different from Roman Catholic churches and even Eastern Orthodox churches elsewhere in the world.⁵

Visiting Nessebar Today

Nessebar began as a Greek outpost in the sixth century BCE. In 1900 CE, the city was still ninety percent Greek and Orthodox Christian, with a population of about two thousand. To preserve the old town Nessebar, a new city was developed across the isthmus in 1925. From the medieval fort walls, the new city and the resort of Slanchev Bryag, developed in 1958, is seen just beyond the Ferris wheel and beaches of the Bulgarian Riviera. A little train takes visitors across the isthmus today, from the old town to the new city.

Church of Christ Tarnovo Style

Not only is Nessebar notable for the number of Byzantine churches in the old town, most amazing is the survival of Orthodox churches during the pendency of over four hundred years of Ottoman Muslim rule. The Ottoman Turks were known for religious toleration. That did not also equate to preservation or maintenance of churches, particularly the number of churches found in Nessebar today. To remain standing, the heros of today are the builders of yesterday.

In some cities, such as in Constantinople, which Ottomans renamed Istanbul, churches were repurposed to mosques. In those instances, minarets were added, such as around the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. There were no minarets in Nessebar, unless they were quickly removed in 1878, upon liberation from Ottoman rule.

Nessebar remains a city with so many churches today owing to the solid initial construction of stone and brick. Houses today in Nessebar often replicate Byzantine church design in small, low, and dark dwellings, with rows of alternating color brick and stone. Houses have small windows and low roofs. Although some historic homes in old town Nessebar today maintain second floors of wood slats, stone and brick were and are the predominant building materials. Garden walls and streets are of stone. In winding streets of the old city, the absence of wood to feed fires contributed to longevity. Unfinished stone and brick exteriors do not require new paint or plaster for maintenance.

Nessebar was a market town. Today the little streets are lined with coffee bars and shops, as they have been for over two thousand years. Trade and affluence diminished during the Ottoman Era, despite its available routes for distant trade. In recent years, Nessebar is enjoying a resurgence of economic vibrancy, cultural expression, and visitation of people from across the world. Today, few of the churches have active congregations, while others are museum pieces that add unique historical flair to wanderings in the city. Today Byzantine churches are not so much places of penance as places for a pleasurable time in a walkable historic city of the Black Sea.

Battle of Varna 1444 to 1453 in the Decade that Impacted the World

Two of the most important dates contributing to world history of consequence, emanating from the Black Sea, were 1444 and 1453. The Battle of Varna in 1444 was short-lived, decisive, and of lasting impact. In 1453, the previously victorious Ottoman army swarmed into Constantinople, ending the life of the Byzantine Empire, and sealing off Europe from goods from Asia to the Far East.⁶ Christopher Columbus, born in 1451, was raised hearing sailors talk of finding a route west to reach the Far East, foreclosed from routes from the Eastern Mediterranean to luxury goods and spices in the Far East by the Ottoman Empire conquests of