The Church of St Paraskeva is a Bulgarian Orthodox

Bulgarian Orthodox Church

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church - Bulgarian Patriarchate is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with some 6.5 million members in the Republic of Bulgaria and between 1.5 and 2.0 million members in a number of European countries, the Americas and Australia...

 church in Sofia

Sofia

Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

, the capital of Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

. The church, dedicated to Saint Paraskeva

Parascheva of the Balkans

Saint Parascheva of the Balkans was an ascetic female saint of the 11th century...

, is located on 58 Georgi Rakovski Street

Georgi Rakovski Street

Georgi Rakovski Street , usually called with its old name Rakovska, is an important street in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, located in the central area of the city. It is named after the famous Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Sava Rakovski...

 in the centre of the city. It is the third-largest church in Sofia.

Plans to build a church at the site date to 1910, when Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

-educated Bulgarian architect Anton Tornyov (1868–1942) won a competition for the church's design. Due to the Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...

 and World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, however, the construction was postponed. In 1922, the church board of trustees announced another competition, which was again won by Tornyov. The construction of the Church of St Paraskeva was complete by 1930, but the finishing works on the portico

Portico

A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls...

s did not cease until 1940.
St Paraskeva has a somewhat unusual design for an Eastern Orthodox church: for example, the cella

Cella

A cella or naos , is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture...

 is in practice a round chamber over 20 metres (65.6 ft) in diameter. The cella gradually disintegrates into the surrounding apse

Apse

In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...

s.