Sofia

Sofia
Sofia; ?????
	City
	; ; 1st row: Sofia skyline from the National Palace of Culture; 2nd row: National Assembly Square (Monument to the Tsar Liberator, National Assembly, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral); 3rd row: Largo; National Palace of Culture; 4th row: Saint Sofia Church; Statue of Saint Sofia; Tsarigradsko shose and Capital Fort
; Flag	; Coat of arms
	Nickname(s): Serdica, Sredetz (older names)
	Motto(s): Grows, but does not age; (?????, ?? ?? ??????, Raste, no ne staree)
	Sofia Location of Sofia in Bulgaria Sofia Sofia (Europe)
	Coordinates: 42°42?N 23°20?E? / ?42.70°N 23.33°ECoordinates: 42°42?N 23°20?E? / ?42.70°N 23.33°E
Country	Bulgaria
Province	Sofia City
Cont. inhabited	since 7000 BC
Neolithic settlement	5500–6000 BC
Thracian settlement	1400 BC
Government
• Mayor	Yordanka Fandakova (GERB)
Area
• City	492 km2 (190 sq mi)
• Urban	5,723 km2 (2,210 sq mi)
• Metro	10,532 km2 (4,066 sq mi)
Elevation	500–2,290 m (1,640–7,510 ft)
Population (2017)
• City	1,238,438
• Density	2,517/km2 (6,520/sq mi)
• Urban	1,548,795
• Urban density	271/km2 (700/sq mi)
• Metro	1,681,592
• Metro density	160/km2 (400/sq mi)
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal code	1000
Area code(s)	(+359) 02
Car plates	C, CA, CB
Website	https://www.sofia.bg/en/web/sofia-municipality/

Sofia (Bulgarian: ??????, translit. Sofiya, IPA: ( listen)) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. The city is at the foot of Vitosha Mountain in the western part of the country. Being in the centre of the Balkan peninsula, it is midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, and closest to the Aegean Sea.

Sofia has been an area of human habitation since at least 7000 BC. Being Bulgaria's primate city, Sofia is a hometown of many of the major local universities, cultural institutions and commercial companies. Sofia is one of the top 10 best places for start-up business in the world, especially in information technologies. Sofia was Europe's most affordable capital to visit in 2013.

Sofia hosts some 1.23 million residents within a territory of 492 km², a concentration of 17.5% of the country population within the 200th percentile of the country territory. The population density is 2.5 people/m². The urban area of Sofia hosts some 1.54 million residents within 5723 km², which comprises Sofia City Province and parts of Sofia Province(Dragoman, Slivnitsa, Kostinbrod, Bozhurishte, Svoge, Elin Pelin, Gorna Malina, Ihtiman, Kostenets) and Pernik Province(Pernik, Radomir), representing 5.16% of the country territory. The metropolitan area of Sofia is based upon one hour of car travel time, stretches internationally and includes Dimitrovgrad in Serbia. Unlike most European metropolitan areas, it is not to be defined as a substantially functional metropolitan area, but is of the type with "limited variety of functions". The metropolitan region of Sofia is inhabited by a population of 1.68 million and is made up of the whole provinces Sofia City, Sofia and Pernik, comprising more than 10,000 km².

Names

The first seal of the city from 1878 which calls it Sredets

For the longest time the city possessed a Thracian name, derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin.

The emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus (53 – 117 AD) gave the city the combinative name of Ulpia Serdica; Ulpia may be derived from an Umbrian cognate of the Latin word lupus, meaning "wolf" or from the latin vulpes (fox). It seems that the first written mention of Serdica was made during his reign and the last mention was in the 19th century in a Bulgarian text (????????, Sardaki).

Other names given to Sofia, such as Serdonpolis (?????? ?????, "City of the Serdi" in Greek) and Triaditza (?????????, "Trinity" in Greek), were mentioned by Byzantine Greek sources or coins. The Slavic name Sredets (???????), which is related to "middle" (?????, "sreda") and to the city's earliest name, first appeared on paper in an 11th-

Release Date :

12:00am on Tuesday 1st January 1946