Аbout 15 years ago a spec of land off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast made it into the international news: archaeologists digging in the remains of a 5th century church on St Ivan Isle declared to have found authentic relics of... St John the Baptist.

The human remains were discovered tucked in an elaborate, Russian-doll-like set of relic boxes. An inscription indicated that the bones were brought here by someone named Thomas and were interred under the church's altar, its sanctum sanctorum, on 24th June, the feast day of St John the Baptist. For some reason, they were not taken out in the 6th century, when the church was entirely rebuilt into a grander structure, nor in the 10th century, when a completely new church was built nearby, nor in 1629, when the isle was abandoned.

The supposed remains of St John the Baptist were found in the ruins of an early Christian church on St Ivan island

The find from St Ivan Isle would not have made international news – after all, there are so many known relics of St John the Baptist that they can provide material for a whole football team – if genetic analysis and carbon dating had not shown that the bones did belong to an individual who lived in the Middle East in the 1st century AD. Just like St John the Baptist himself.

Today the holy relics are displayed in St Cyril and Methodius church in Sozopol, the nearest town. Most of the time, St Ivan Isle, the place of the discovery, remains quiet but for an odd tourist boat arriving from Sozopol in summertime.

The relics are now exhibited for believers and tourists to see in Sozopol's modern church

It was not always so. The ancient remains where the relics were found were once home of a lively monastic community. Through the centuries, the monks of St John the Baptist monastery had seen and experienced a lot. They had moments of prosperity and joy. Byzantine emperors, Bulgarian kings and Ottoman sultans gave them lavish donations in precious items and fertile land. One of their abbots managed to become the Patriarch of Constantinople, John XII Cosmas. He helped broker a peace treaty between Byzantine Emperor Andronicus II and Bulgarian King Svetoslav Terter, in 1304. The treaty included a royal wedding between Terter and Byzantine princess Theodora Palaeologina that supposedly took place in the monastery.

In the community's long history there were also moments of devastation, like its destruction during the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. The greatest disaster befell in 1629, when Cossack pirates turned St Ivan Isle into a base from which they attacked Ottoman ships. The Ottoman reprisal was merciless. The Turks torched the monastery. The surviving brothers ran away and settled on another small island near Constantinople. They managed to take some of their wealth with them, including valuable manuscripts. In the course of time, they ended up all over Europe, including Sweden.

The island has been deserted ever since, if you do not count the Russian military hospital which was operational during the 1828-1829 Russo-Turkish war.

Little traces of this intriguing past now survive on the barren surface of St Ivan, which – with its area of 0.66 sq km – happens to be Bulgaria's largest Black Sea island. However, the isle is not entirely devoid of life. It is the home of over 70 bird species, including the largest and oldest nesting colonies of Audouin's and yellow-legged gulls. Amazingly, the island is also the location of Bulgaria's only earth rabbit colony, in existence since 1934. The coexistence between the gulls and the rabbits is far from harmonious. Tiny bones of bunnies eaten by the birds can be seen scattered all over the island.

If you visit, try to avoid May, when seagulls nest and may become aggressive to humans.