Podcast in English
Text size
Bulgarian National Radio © 2025 All Rights Reserved

Construction of the first Bulgarian church in London under way

Photo: bulgarianembassy-london.org

The construction of the first Bulgarian Orthodox church in London named after Saint Ivan Rilski  is progressing. To date, only the Bulgarian Orthodox community does not have its own church in the United Kingdom.

The church is being built in the heart of London, within the property of the Bulgarian embassy, about 100 meters from the Royal Albert Hall and a few hundred meters from Kensington Palace. 

In a record short period of 4 months, the project was defended before the municipality in Westminster with the efforts of Bulgarian Ambassador Marin Raykov who gave the idea for the church and received a construction permit. 

At the end of 2023, the Bulgarian government allocated money for the construction of the church. Funds were also collected from Bulgarians in Great Britain. 

The project is by the Italian architect Carlo Bughi. 

"In order for the project to be approved, it had to not disturb the architectural appearance of the building. In reality, the facade will not be radically changed. We will build a medium-sized church with a dome and we will make it so that the Bulgarian community and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church actually have a definitely representative and beautiful temple," said Ambassador Raykov.

The new church will have a capacity for between 130 and 150 people and will be completed in a year and a half.



Последвайте ни и в Google News Showcase, за да научите най-важното от деня!
Listen to the daily news from Bulgaria presented in "Bulgaria Today" podcast, available in Spotify.

More from category

Photo: The Bulgarian Embassy in the USA

Bulgarians around the world bow down to the Apostle of Freedom

152 years after the death of the Apostle of Freedom, the personality of Vasil Levski continues to excite Bulgarians, regardless of whether they are in the country or abroad. The Embassy of Bulgaria in Athens, Greece , has extended an invitation to the..

published on 2/19/25 11:23 AM
Milen Tsvetkov

The personalities who leave a mark on Bulgarian society and the film "Milen"

Easter 2020 went down in history with two things. The first was the state of emergency, introduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic that imposed a number of restrictions on us, the consequences of which we are still recovering from. The..

published on 2/18/25 9:41 PM

Todor Tokin: BNR's Foreign Broadcasts was not a channel of communist ideology, on the contrary!

At various times in its existence, the BNR's Directorate of Foreign Language Broadcasts, now known as Radio Bulgaria, the multimedia multilingual platform of Bulgarian National Radio, was more than just a workplace for a number of popular journalists...

published on 2/16/25 7:15 AM