I've been meaning to go to this exhibition for ages, so I went today. The exhibition is of Thracian art from all over Bulgaria. For those who don't know, Thrace was an ancient kingdom here at the time of the Greeks. The exhibition was amazing. Here are some pictures. This is a silver and gold bowl, 4th century BC: Here is another bowl: Here is a drinking vessel. They would put wine in the top and then shotgun it during frenzied Dionysus parties. Here is another one: Here is an urn or a vase, or possibly a bits and pieces jar, wherein the ancient Thracians would put all those wee things that didn't have a proper place anywhere else in the house, like old key-rings and buttons from shirts and broken nail-clippers. Here is a detail from this same vase. You can see Dionysus holding the very same drinking vessel from the other picture. Somebody copied somebody else anyway, but we'll never know. So after the Thracian treasure exhibition I went to an icon exhibition, from the time of the Bulgarian National Revival. This was a bit like the Celtic Twilight for Bulgaria. The icons are amazing, if sometimes bizzare. This was the first one in the door: I am not quite sure what this one shows. I know that the lads all gathered around are the apostles and the fella with the wings is the angel Gabriel, but I'm not sure about which scene this depicts. Maybe someone can tell me. Here's another: Again I'm a bit confused by this one. It looks like it could be Mary with Jesus, and then we have the Three Magi with gifts, but it isn't a stable, and the Magi look suspiciously like women. And that could be Joseph in the background, but I don't know what's happening with the angel. And who's that woman in the foreground? Some of the next ones are a bit clearer: That is fairly obviously the Immaculate Conception, with the angel coming down to Mary. God is up above. He appears in all the paintings with a triangle around his head. This is symbolic of the Trinity. This next one is amazing. This is the Archangel Michael. I'm not sure who the man under his feet is, but here's a close up: The sections at the bottom and around the sides all show scenes from the Bible. I took a close up of the Red Sea crashing down on teh Egyptians. Here's Palm Sunday: Here's the Ascension: Old Lazarus: John The Baptist and Jesus in the river: And here's Saint Trifon. The triangle in the sky is God, the triangle again symbolizes the Trinity and the eye is the all-seeing eye of God. That's all for now. I have loads more, and loads more really good ones, but that's enough for one post.