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Excavation

  • Pliska - Great Basilica
  • Pliska
  • Pliska
  • Bulgaria
  • Shumen
  • Kaspichan
  • Pliska

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • PLISKA (Pavel Georgiev – pavel_g@gbg.bg, Tihomir Tihov, Gergana Ilieva) The Great Basilica had been discovered in 1899–1900 and excavated throughout the 20th century. It is the biggest church in Mediaeval Bulgaria, built by Prince Boris I in c. AD 875, shortly after the Christianization of the Bulgars in AD 864 – 865, and existed until the middle of the 11th century. The basilica was constructed over the foundations of a cross-like pagan proto-Bulgarian temple. It was a three-nave basilica, initially with a single apse and later with three apses, with a narthex and an atrium. The basilica was 99 m long and 29.50 m wide. There was a baptistery with a cross-like piscina adjoining the southern wall of the basilica. In 2015, the explorations of the well beneath the southern aisle discovered in 1899 were resumed. It was constructed inside a pit, 3.90 m in diameter in its upper part and 2.80 m in diameter in its lower part, 8.20 m deep. The well has a square layout, built of stones bonded with clay. It was covered with a hemispherical dome constructed of bricks bonded with mortar, which stood over an octagonal structure built of vertical stone slabs and walls of bricks. The dome was situated beneath the floor of the basilica. The well was synchronous to the cross-like pagan proto-Bulgarian temple explored under the altar of the basilica. After the proto-Bulgarian temple was destroyed, the well continued to function as a holy spring, being accessible via a stone staircase, and a cenotaph was built close to it. There were incised crosses and a Christ Monogram. Fragmentary ceramic vessels of the second half of the 9th – 10th centuries were found in the well. The proto-Bulgarian monogram |Y| was incised on a jug and there is a Greek graffito with the name Phevronia on another one. The finds from the well also included over 40 weights for buckets, marble veneer, tiles and frames, fragments from columns, two smalt tesserae, a fragment from a marble mortarium with incised cross, a copper pendant-encolpion, eight stone spindle whorls. In addition, the finds from the basilica included lead seals of Georgios, Archbishop of Bulgaria, and Gregorios, koumerkiarios of Deultum, and two folleis of Leo VI the Wise.

  • Pavel Georgiev - Shumen Branch of the Archaeological Institute and Museum 
  • Tihomir Tihov - Regional Museum of History – Shumen 
  • Gergana Ilieva - Regional Museum of History – Shumen 

Director

Team

Research Body

  • Regional Museum of History – Shumen
  • Shumen Branch of the Archaeological Institute and Museum

Funding Body

Images

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