Statue of St. Sofia in downtown Sofia. The town is very old with the original settlers being Thracian tribes around 3000 BC. The Thracians were an interesting lot who were known to have imbibed in smokking marijuana, making and drinking copious amounts of wine, promiscuity and generally having wild parties in honor of Dionysus. In other words, they were ancient hippies. It is no surprise then that they were not known to attack their neighbors or get into fights. It is also not surprising that they were pretty much kicked out of most of ancient Thrace (which extends from Turkey through Greece and up into Bulgaria and Macedonia) by any men with spears marching through. The Greeks were the first to push the Thracians out. The Romans/Byzantines made Sofia an important town on the road from Constantinople and Belgrade. In the 5th century the Huns levelled the town. The Byzantine empire ruled the area until the 7th century migration of the Bulgars and other Slavic tribes. It swapped hands a number of times between Byzantine Emperors and a series of Bulgar Kings. Finally, the Turks captured the town in 1382 and for the next five centuries it was under Ottoman rule before liberated in 1870s. Almost nothing remains from most of the rulers except a few old churches and mosques.