Street Art in Sofia

Sofia's street art is known for building-size murals on socialist-era apartment blocks, plus small surprises in the center: painted utility boxes, a communist-era advert scratched into plaster, a house shaped like a snail. This guide covers where the best pieces are, area by area, who painted them, how to reach the ones outside the center, and how to get good photos of them.

Sofia street art at a glance

Street art and graffiti in Sofia began in the mid-1990s. Two projects from 2011 shaped what you see today. Artists started painting the city's utility boxes, and the Urban Creatures festival brought Bulgarian and foreign painters to cover the sides of apartment blocks in Hadzhi Dimitar.

In 2022 Sofia Municipality published a street art map with 20 locations, featuring work by 16 artists: 11 Bulgarian and 5 from abroad. The pieces on it are painted on electrical panels, walls and full building facades, and all of them can be reached on foot, by bike or by public transport. The printed map, in Bulgarian and English, is at the city's tourist information centers.

Most of what follows sits either in the walkable center or in Hadzhi Dimitar, a short taxi ride away.

Street art in central Sofia

The center's good pieces are spread across side streets, parking lots and the backs of market stalls, and you can walk to all of them from Serdika station.

Tsar Shishman and Rakovski: the painted utility boxes

The utility box project is the easiest Sofia street art to find, because you walk past it without trying. Since 2011, artists have painted the city's electrical boxes, and many of the best sit along Tsar Shishman Street and Rakovski Street. Ventsislav Dikov's boxes are the ones I'd look out for.

Tsar Shishman is also one of the nicest streets in Sofia to wander, with small shops, cafes and some of the best bars in Sofia behind its doors. At its corner with Hadji Dimitar Street, a small street in the center that shares its name with the mural district, a little building and the walls above it are covered in graffiti from the sidewalk to the second floor.

Serdika, the Women's Market and the mineral springs

The parking lot above Serdika metro station, at 9 Knyaginya Maria Luiza Boulevard, is one of the best-known street art spots in the city. Its walls carry the Chupa Chups mural, an old advert for the candy, with a twist: the Chupa Chups logo was designed by Salvador Dali. The same walls hold a mural of Saint Sofia.

Walk north up the same boulevard and you pass Banya Bashi Mosque and the Central Market Hall. The duo Arsek & Erase painted a large mural near the two of them, and another of their pieces covers a building on Tsar Samuil Street, a short walk from the Women's Market, as part of a project for the City Gallery on Pirotska Street.

Inside Zhenski Pazar, the Women's Market, walk around behind the stalls: the artist Gana painted the back of one that sells nuts.

Around the mineral springs, where locals fill bottles with hot water from the taps, the painter Bozko covered the side of a building with Saint George killing the dragon. A short walk away, a mural by the artist Stern sits on the wall above a small cafe.

Slavyanska Street, the Rotunda and Vitosha Boulevard

At 8 Slavyanska Street, by Theatre 199, is a piece of street art from the communist years: a sgraffito, a wall picture scratched into layered plaster, by Stoyan Iliev. It advertises Bulgarplod. Next to the theater is a monumental wall painting by Valentin Stoychev. For more art from those decades, the Museum of Socialist Art has the statues and the posters.

Near the Rotunda of St George, the Wall of Prosperity is covered in quotes and photos of famous people. By the Catholic Cathedral of St Joseph, look for the Graffopost piece.

On a side street off Vitosha Boulevard, a mural called Parked Life shows vehicles piled up in a flood, with birds on top. On Iskar Street, a fire station car park holds Like a Candle in the Dark by the artist Iliev Yeto.

Bacho Kiro Street, in the center, has three murals within two blocks, across from No. 18, across from No. 26 and next to No. 35. You can see all three in about ten minutes, photos included.

Portraits of Bulgarian heroes

Sofia's walls and utility boxes carry a lot of national history. One mural paints Vasil Levski, the 19th-century hero of the fight against Ottoman rule, from a historical photograph, and another shows Dimitar Spisarevski.

About 50 meters from Macedonia Square, two oval portraits show the Miladinov brothers, Konstantin and Dimitar, under a sign in Cyrillic that reads "Notable Bulgarians". If you can read the Bulgarian alphabet, the names under portraits like these turn a walk into a short course in Bulgarian history.

Hadzhi Dimitar: Sofia's mural district

If you only go to one place for street art, make it Hadzhi Dimitar. It is a neighborhood of gray socialist housing blocks northeast of the center, and since the first Urban Creatures festival, local and foreign artists have painted building-size murals on the sides of the blocks.

The pieces I'd look for:

• Nineties by Bozko. One of the festival walls by Bozko, the painter of the Saint George near the mineral springs.
• Surprise by Etam Cru. A large piece by the Polish team, one of the foreign crews the festival brought in.
• Nasimo's portraits. The best known shows Grandpa Dobri, Dobri Dobrev, the old man who walked about 10 km a day to beg outside Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and gave everything he collected to churches and orphanages. Nasimo painted him with a candle in his hands and doves around him.

The murals are spread over several streets: Spas Ginev, Ostrovo at No. 10 to 12, Filip Totyu at No. 57 and No. 118, and Makgahan at No. 42. Allow time to walk between them, and look up, because the best ones start a few floors above the sidewalk.

One more address for the map app is Underground, a gallery space next to the Five High skate park at 4 Vladayska Reka Street.

Hadzhi Dimitar is a residential area, so stay on the public sidewalks and keep your voice down near the building entrances. A taxi from the center is the simplest way in, and public transport runs there on the same €0.80 ticket that covers getting around Sofia.

Street art farther out

Borisova Gradina and the stadium walls

Borisova Gradina, the oldest and best-known park in Sofia, is a hotbed of graffiti around the Vasil Levski National Stadium. Some of the pieces there are about the local football clubs.

The one I'd look for is a memorial mural of Georgi Asparuhov, the footballer, painted up the side of an apartment block close to the stadium. You can see it from the street below.

Poduyane and Pette Kyosheta

In Poduyane, east of the center, the 140 ideas crew painted a mural on a school wall just off Sitnyakovo Boulevard.

In Pette Kyosheta, at 55 Sandor Petofi Street, Nasimo painted God's Gift, a Bulgarian bride.

The Snail House in Simeonovo

The Snail House, at 187 Simeonovsko Shose Boulevard in Simeonovo, is a five-story residential building that the architect Simeon Simeonov shaped like a crawling snail, with no straight walls. Swirls of bright color cover the outside, the front door is the snail's mouth, and a yellow bee on its back is the chimney.

It is on the way to Vitosha Mountain, since Simeonovo is one of the neighborhoods at the foot of the trails, so I'd combine it with a hike on Vitosha. It is a private building, so look and photograph from the street.

Sofia street art spots in one table

Tips for seeing and photographing the murals

Go in the morning. Early is the best time to try the Serdika parking lot, the streets of Hadzhi Dimitar are quiet, and you have the light before the cafes on Tsar Shishman fill their terraces. I'd do the center one day and Hadzhi Dimitar as a separate half day, because walking between them eats the time you want for looking.

Bring a wide lens for the building-size murals and a zoom for the details high on the walls.

Take breaks where the art is. Izzy's, a brunch cafe in the streets with many of the center's murals, is one of Sofia's best cafes for a long breakfast between walls. If you are heading to Plovdiv as well, its old Kapana quarter was renovated for the 2019 Capital of Culture year, and street art now covers many of its walls on a Plovdiv day trip.