Abstract:
Nessebar, a multi-millenary settlement (2000 years BC), synchronous to the period of maximum flourishing of the antique cities, a period approximately incumbent to the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC in the Middle East, respectively to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC in the Mediterranean hinterland, blends a diachronic succession of various cultures and civilizations (Thracian, Classical-Greek, Roman, Byzantine. Slavic, Ottoman, Bulgarian), a reality that will place it in the hierarchy of certain fabulous cultural topoi. Through its uniqueness, connected to the most significant spatial concentration of places of worship, related to the number of inhabitants, Nessebar is today a living legend. The unique cultural and religious heritage of Nessebar, intimately tied to the tumultuous history of the Balkan area, has essentially marked and determined the shape, size and value of the establishments. We can thus follow in a chronological perspective, through the churches, the rise and fall of the economic and political climate, these being “signs” strictly materialized up to the level of the force of the resources, competence and disponibilities the community had. To this day, the city preserves more than a hundred private architectural ensembles from the period of the “Bulgarian National Revival”. Built at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, these belong to an original style of architecture, defining for the “Black Sea Style”. The pattern exposes an evolution on two levels, supported by a ground floor built of stone, with an irregular shape imposed by the trajectory of the streets – with which they are often in a homogeneous continuity. The upper floor, built of wood, had a much wider extension, generously cantilevered above the street. The conclusions highlight the fundamental cultural meaning of our approach, which traverses an ascending path from periegesis towards exegesis and afterwards, to hermeneutics.