The Bulgarian St. Stephen Church

March 24th, 2010 by Tamra

The Bulgarian Iron Church

I was supposed to have a photography class in this neighborhood today, but the class was cancelled on account of gloomy weather. I decided to go anyway, because I’ve never see this church (also known as the Bulgarian Iron Church) before. Here’s what I learned. It’s a Bulgarian Orthodox Church that was made from cast iron in Vienna in the 1890s. It was shipped in pieces, all 500 tons of it, down the Danube and across the Black Sea and assembled on the Golden Horn. Apparently pre-fab cast iron churches were all the rage in the 1890s. Even Gustave Eiffel designed and shipped them as far away as Peru and the Philippines.

You can see from the photo that the exterior is suffering from rust and corrosion; I don’t know if that’s a metaphor or not. And the inside did not sound like a bell, which is what I half expected.