FREE OF COMMUNIST CONTROLS, SOFIA BLOSSOMS ONCE MORE.

Byline: William A. Davis Boston Globe

For most American visitors, Sofia is their introduction to Bulgaria. And while the capital city may reinforce a few common stereotypes about the country, it refutes many others.

Bulgaria's image during the Cold War, when it was considered the most loyal of Soviet satellites, was that of a gray and dreary place. Sofia, however, has one of the Balkans' most attractive natural settings. Located on a fertile plain halfway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, the city is circled by a chain of usually snowcapped mountains.

Driving into the city from the airport, you view some scenic countryside but also pass through a belt of shoddily built, boxlike and virtually identical high-rise apartment buildings. These dormitory suburbs represent the communist system at its most depressing and dehumanizing.

Sofia's city center, on the other hand, has an old-fashioned elegance with broad boulevards, well-kept parks, dignified 19th-century buildings and many richly embellished Orthodox churches.

Red stars and images of Lenin, formerly ubiquitous, are now nowhere to be seen in Sofia. These days, once-forbidden Western pop music blares nonstop from radios and TVs while advertisements for Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Marlboro cigarettes are everywhere.

The old regime's two most symbolic edifices - Party House, headquarters of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and the mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov, first head of the Bulgarian People's Republic - are both conspicuously vacant.

Although there are medieval churches and mosques in Sofia, the downtown area was largely laid out in the 19th century, after the city became capital of the newly independent Kingdom of Bulgaria. Most places of interest are within the formally planned city center, a few blocks from the old palace and on or just off boulevards distinctively paved with gold-colored bricks.

Lots of real gold can be seen in the National History Museum, which has an unrivaled collection of gold - and silver - objects crafted by the Thracians, an ancient people who occupied much of what is now Bulgaria in pre-Christian times. Recovered from archeological sites, these beautifully crafted cups, vessels, jewelry and horse trappings are decorated with richly detailed hunting scenes and imaginative representations of wild beasts and mythological figures.

Gold has also been lavished on what is unquestionably the most impressive building in Sofia: Alexander Nevski Cathedral. The massive church - it holds 5,000 worshipers - is a memorial to the Russians who died helping Bulgaria win its freedom from Turkey in the 1877-78 War of Liberation.

Nevski Cathedral bulges with gilded domes and half domes. The cavernous interior glitters with gold, and the walls are covered with icons and huge, brightly-colored frescoes.

The parks around Nevski Cathedral are popular places for Sofians to promenade on weekends. Now that free enterprise has been unleashed, they are also much-frequented by street traders.

Elderly women selling hand-made lace cluster around Nevski Square, in front of the cathedral and at the entrance to St. Sophia. Antique and crafts dealers favor the daily outdoor flea market in Kristal Park, across from the Russian Church.

The city's liveliest street, the place where young and Western-oriented Sofians congregate, is Vitosha Boulevard, which is lined with restaurants and sidewalk cafes, many recently opened by enterprising would-be capitalists. The generally well-dressed clientele wouldn't look out of place in the bistros of London, Paris or New York. Yuzhen Park, at the southern end of Vitosha Boulevard, is particularly popular with families out for a stroll.

An interesting day trip from Sofia is to Rila Monastery, largest and best known of Bulgaria's renowned ``painted'' monasteries. Located some 65 miles south of Sofia, the monastery is in a small valley on a forested slope of the 9,000-foot-high Rila Mountains.

Rila monastery was founded in the 10th century by the monk Ivan Rilski, who was looking for serious solitude. Approachable only by a single winding mountain road, the still-isolated monastery looms like a fortress: It was built as a stronghold of monastic civilization in an age of barbarism and banditry.

The domed monastery church is covered with superb frescoes inside and out. The interior is lavishly decorated, the sanctuary a wall of icons embellished with carvings and gold leaf.

But the greatest treasure is the unique Rila Cross. This is a small wooden cross carved with 143 three-dimensional biblical scenes containing 1,500 detailed figures, each the size of a grain of rice. The carver, a monk named Rafael, used only a needle, took 12 years to finish the cross - and went blind.

On Location For information aobut travel to Bulgaria, write to Balkan Holidays, 317 Madison Ave., Suite 508, New York, N.Y. 10017.

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Photo: A statue of Tsar Al exander II, its base sporting bronze figures commemorating battles of 1877-1879, stands next to a modern hotel in Ploshtad Narodno Subranie in Sofia.