Apollonia Magna.
Ruled in turn by the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Ottoman Empires, Sozopol was assigned to the newly independent Bulgaria in the 19th century. At the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence (1821) prominent local personalities were arrested and executed by the Ottoman authorities due to participation in the preparations of the struggle.
Almost all of its Greek population was exchanged with Bulgarians from Eastern Thrace in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars. In 2011 the remainings of an ancient Greek settlement, part of Apollonia, were excavated in the small island of St. Kirik (Saint Cerycus) off Sozopolis.
One of the most active and popular mayors had been Nikola Kaloyanov, who initiated numerous infrastructure changes to modernize the town in the 70s.
Since 1984 Sozopol hosts the Apollonia art festivities every September, which include theatre shows, exhibitions, movies, musical and dance performances, book presentations and other cultural events.
Ecclesiastical history
Sozopol was Christianized early. Bishops are recorded as resident there from at least 431. At least eight bishops are known (Le Quien,Oriens christianus, I, 1181): Athanasius (431), Peter (680), Euthymius (787) and Ignatius (869); Theodosius (1357), Joannicius, who became Patriarch of Constantinople (1524), Philotheus (1564) and Joasaph (1721).
From being suffragan to the archbishopric of Adrianopolis, it became in the fourteenth century a metropolis without suffragan sees; it disappeared perhaps temporarily with the Turkish conquest, but reappeared later; in 1808 it was united to the See of Agathopolis. The titular resided at Agathopolis, in Ottoman days called Akht�bolou, in the vilayet of Adrianopolis (Edirne, in European Turkey).
Eubel (Hierarchia catholica medii �vi, I, 194) mentions four Latin bishops of the fourteenth century.
The city remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church, that of Sozopolis in
