The President of the Bulgarian Economic and Social Council, Lalko Dulevski (on the right in the picture), laid on a special treat for the President of the EESC’s Various Interests Group, Luca Jahier, this lunchtime, and I was privileged to be invited along. The treat was a guided visit to one of Sofia’s most ancient surviving structures, the Sveti Georgi Rotunda, which dates from the 4th century AD, and the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral. As our guide, Dafina Bashinakova, told the much-battered Rotunda’s story – Roman church, Ottoman mosque, mausoleum and, finally, Orthodox church – I was reminded of an earlier post about the reincarnations of buildings. In the Rotunda’s case,surviving fragments of frescos denote each reincarnation, including a tiny fragment of Arabic script. Sofia has always been a crossroads, as the concentration of religious buildings in this area – mosque, synagogue, Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals – illustrates. In the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral Dafina led us to the velvet-robed mummified body of Sveti Kral Stefan Milotin, a medieval king of Serbia whose miraculous healing powers attract Serbian Orthodox pilgrims to this day. The guided tour was a moment of great privilege. Thank you, Lalko!