Red Church (Bulgaria)

The Red Church (Bulgarian: Червена църква, Chervena tsarkva, pronounced [tʃɛrˈvɛnɐ ˈtsərkvɐ]) is a large partially preserved late Roman (early Byzantine) Christian basilica in south central Bulgaria. Dating to the late 5th–early 6th century, the church stands near the town of Perushtitsa in western Plovdiv Province, some 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southwest of the city of Plovdiv. The Red Church is a rare example of solid brick construction in a church from Late Antiquity in Bulgaria, and it was the red colour of the bricks that gave the church its name.

Probably built under Emperor Anastasius I (491–518), the Red Church originally measured 32.70 by 25.90 metres (107.3 by 85.0 ft). The northern wall, the best preserved, reaches around 14 m (46 ft) in height. The church features four semi-domes, a narthex and an outer narthex (exonarthex). The symmetry of the building is disrupted by a baptistery with a piscina attached to the northern wall of the narthex and a chapel located under the semi-dome of the church's south side. The piscina in the baptistery was faced with pink marble. The church was originally domed, but hardly any of the dome has been preserved.

The floor of the church was covered with mosaics and the interior was decorated with frescoes. The early murals of the Red Church illustrate the gradual shift from complex mosaics to frescoes in the interior decoration of Christian churches which was taking place at the time. Some decoration is preserved in the National Historical Museum in Sofia. Though now lost, part of those early frescoes were the apocryphal scenes of the flight of Elizabeth and the murder of Zechariah, John the Baptist's parents.

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