Qualla: Round Church, Preslav https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Round Church, Preslav https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav Round Church, Preslav: Introduction https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Klearchos Kapoutsis from Santorini, Greece, CC BY 2.0. Tsar Simeon I had something to prove. By the early 10th century, the First Bulgarian Empire stretched from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, threatened Constantinople itself, and treated the Byzantines as more nuisance than overlord. Simeon was not interested in being a junior partner. He had moved his capital from Pliska, with its uncomfortable pagan associations, to a new city he called Preslav, and he was filling it with buildings calculated to make Constantinople jealous. The most ambitious of these was a rotunda church, completed sometime before 907 AD, whose plan resembled nothing else in the Balkans. The Bulgarians knew what they had built. They called it the Golden Church.

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Image: Klearchos Kapoutsis from Santorini, Greece | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Round Church, Preslav: The Golden Age https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Кардам, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bulgaria had been formally Christianized only a generation earlier under Simeon's father Boris I, who had played Byzantium and the Papacy against each other to win church autonomy. Simeon, raised and educated in Constantinople, returned home determined to make Bulgaria a literary...

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Image: Кардам | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-the-golden-age.mp3 0:06 2 full Round Church, Preslav: Three Sections, One Improbable Plan https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Evelina Jordanova, CC BY-SA 4.0. The church has three parts. A wide atrium courtyard, decorated with fourteen vaults and lined with limestone columns, fronts the building. A rectangular narthex with two circular turrets, each three meters in diameter and originally fitted with spiral staircases, serves as the en...

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Image: Evelina Jordanova | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-three-sections-one-improbable-plan.mp3 0:06 3 full Round Church, Preslav: The Decoration https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Nikolov2010, CC0. The Round Church was unmatched in Preslav for the richness of its interior. Polychrome ceramic tiles, glazed in brown, yellow, green, blue, and blue-green, covered surfaces in geometric and floral patterns. Mosaic and ceramic icons in clay, glass, and colored stone, set against g...

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Image: Nikolov2010 | CC0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-the-decoration.mp3 0:06 4 full Round Church, Preslav: Tudora and the Travelers https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Izvora, Public domain. The walls hold graffiti that medieval visitors carved or inked: Christian crosses, ships, animals, names of saints. One epitaph identifies a tombstone as belonging to 'God's servant Tudora,' a woman buried somewhere in the church complex. Hundreds of small drawings cover the surv...

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Image: Izvora | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-tudora-and-the-travelers.mp3 0:06 5 full Round Church, Preslav: Discovery and Reconstruction https://qualla.com/round-church-preslav/ Photo credit Nam3 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. After Bulgaria fell to Byzantium in 1018, Preslav declined and was eventually abandoned. The Round Church collapsed at some point. By the modern era it was a ruin known mostly to local farmers. Archaeologists from the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia and the Bulgarian Anti...

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Image: Nam3 at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/e/j/round-church-preslav-wp/sxej-round-church-preslav-discovery-and-reconstruction.mp3 0:06 6 full