Where I Walk, Rome Still Stands — Serdica 2025!

When the World Splits Open — and Serdica Steps Forward

It often begins at dusk. When the lights come on in Sofia, when the mountains become dark silhouettes, and Vitosha paints the city in a deep blue tone. That’s when something happens to the perspective. The lines between eras blur, and history no longer lies behind me — it lies beneath me, around me, inside me.

I walk past the Goethe-Institut. I’ve done it many times. But today is different. There’s something in the air. Maybe it's the way the wind moves between the buildings. Maybe the angle of the light over the stone pavements. Maybe that strange moment of stillness before a city exhales.

I feel I should keep walking — but I don’t.
I stop.
I listen.

And in a single moment, Sofia disappears.

I don’t blink. I don’t turn my head. But the streets, the trams, the cafés — all fade away. Instead, another city grows around me. A city of stone, arches, vaults, and mosaic floors.

Serdica.

I stand in the same place, yet in another age.

The Arena Awakens

The sound reaches me first.
A rumble. A deep, vibrating, living noise.

I understand it slowly. It is the crowd. Thousands of voices, expectant, impatient, hungry for drama. I hear music — flutes, trumpets, drums. I hear animals roaring in underground chambers. I hear metal striking metal, rhythmic and steady. Gladiators warming up.

Then comes the scent — hay, blood, dust, oil, sweat, incense.
I breathe it in, and it feels like inhaling two thousand years.

The amphitheater rises before me, vast and powerful, far larger than the fragment we see today. Arched walls, stone upon stone, steps filled with life. A monument built by an empire determined to leave its imprint on the world.

I know I am seeing a vision — but it feels more real than reality.

People push toward the entrances, eager to get inside. Children cling to their parents’ hands. Merchants shout, laugh, argue. Soldiers patrol in polished armor. It is life in its purest form, so intense that it imprints itself on me.

And I stand in the midst of it all.
An invisible traveler between worlds.

When the Gladiators Step Out

I hear the heavy gates open toward the center of the arena.
A metallic groan.
A roar from the crowd that erupts like a storm.

The first men step out. Gladiators.
There is something immediate and primal in their presence. Not the macho fantasy of Hollywood, but real men, with real fears and real destinies. Eyes burned by discipline, bodies shaped by survival.

They move with a kind of dignity our age has forgotten — a deep understanding that life is fragile, that every breath is borrowed, that each step is a decision.

Among them I see a murmillo, helmet shining in the sun, shield wide as a door.
Beside him stands a Thracian warrior with a sica — the curved blade gleaming.

It is a choreography, but not rehearsed. It is instinct.
The crowd chants names I do not know.
I hear words in Latin, Greek, Thracian.

And again the realization hits:

I am not watching. I am there.

The Fight — and Time Itself Cracks Open

The fight begins with circles drawn in the sand.
Light steps. Testing strikes.
A dance of life and death.

The gladiators move with such precision, such raw presence, that at first I don’t understand what I’m witnessing.

Then it strikes me:
It is not the violence the people crave.
It is the courage.
The will to face fate without flinching.
The humanity within the inhuman.

When steel clashes against shield, I hear it as if it were right beside my ear.
When the sand swirls upward, I feel it against my skin.
When the crowd roars, I sense their breath behind me.

It is as if Sofia 2025 cracks open and Serdica floods through like light through broken stone.

And amidst everything, I hear a voice — as if someone stands just behind me:

“You walk on the ground where we once lived.
Do not forget us.”

Back to the Present — But Not Alone

And as quickly as it came — it is gone.
The arena dissolves.
The crowd fades.
Dust turns to air.
Sound becomes silence.

I stand on Dondukov again.

Trams rattle by.
Cars drive.
People argue into their phones.
A dog barks somewhere in the distance.

But I am not the same.
I carry something with me.
A presence from the past walking beside me now.

It feels like stepping into a movie and discovering that the film was real. Like Ridley Scott had filmed Serdica long before he filmed Rome. Like I am walking through the original set of Gladiator — only this one existed, truly existed.

Sofia 2025 — A City Where Two Worlds Touch

There are cities that preserve their history like a museum.
Sofia is not one of them.

Here, history lies in the ground, in the walls, in the air.
It lives. It breathes. It waits to be rediscovered.

I don’t need to imagine the gladiators.
I only need to listen.
The earth tells the rest.

And Perhaps… That’s What Moves Me Most

To stand in Sofia in 2025 and feel that Rome still stands.
Not as ruins, but as presence.
Not as history, but as blood in the veins of the city.

It is like being in two films at the same time:
One taking place now — noisy, modern, chaotic.
The other epic, monumental, timeless.

And I stand in the center.
A bridge between them.

Maybe that’s why I love Sofia.
Not for what it is — but for everything it has been.
Not for its buildings — but for what lies beneath them.
Not because it’s perfect — but because it is a palimpsest of centuries.

It is a feeling I’ve never found anywhere else.
A feeling that history is not something you read —
it is something you walk through.

Sofia. Serdica. Two Names. One Soul.

And so every time I pass Arena di Serdica, every time I pause and breathe the air where gladiators once fought for glory, I feel the same thing:

I stand in one of the Roman Empire’s living cities.
Not in a book.
Not in a documentary.
But in the present.

History is not behind me.
It is beneath my shoes.

And I — a man from another time, another land —
get to walk here and feel all of it.

It is a privilege.
It is a gift.
And it is an echo that never fades.