Historical tours
Five tours that bring the history of communism back to the urban space
History and memory need places to tell their stories - spaces where the past can be experienced. While Sofia still has no museum dedicated to communism, the city itself can be an open-air museum. Just as Berlin has its Topography of Terror, Sofia is beginning to build its own memory map - a network of places and figures that shaped the history of the communist regime and the transition that followed.
With the help of historians and public figures, we created five tours that tell different aspects of our past: from "The Imposition of the Regime" and its system of fear and propaganda, through "Figures of Resistance", which tell of personal and civic courage, to the symbols of cultural ideology in "The National Palace of Culture and Esoteric Socialism", the repressive city along the "Memory Tram" route, and the first rallies for democracy in the "Freedom Tour".
The tours are being held for the first time as part of 10.11 Festival, in a demo format. Join us and share your impressions - what you remember, what could be improved, and how Sofia can better tell the story of its recent past.
Tours, workshops and discussions will be held in Bulgarian, unless otherwise specified.
Full Map of Tours
The silhouette of the National Palace of Culture (NDK) dominates the city as a symbol of socialist architecture and art, and its scale is reminiscent of the communist regime's quest for supremacy. Built on the idea of Lyudmila Zhivkova and opened in 1981 for the celebrations of 1300 years of Bulgaria, the palace embodies her ideas of the "new spiritual beginning" and a symbiosis between culture, ideology, and esotericism. In the building, power and symbolism intertwine - an example of how art was used as a tool of propaganda. Its basements continue to hold legends and secrets, and the park around the palace preserves different layers of memory - from the destroyed concrete compositions of socialist art to the piece of the Berlin Wall, which reminds us how impossible freedom once seemed.
Today, NDK is both a cultural center and a testament to its time - a place, in which the city's past and present continue to reside together.
To this day, there is a prevailing understanding that Bulgarians did not actively oppose the communist regime, that citizens cannot achieve much on their own, and that our freedom in 1989 was "given" to us. Unlike countries where the Berlin Uprising, the Hungarian Revolution, or Solidarity in Poland are remembered, in Bulgaria, stories of resistance and dissent have long remained untold. This tour gathers and showcases some of them.
The route presents various manifestations of civil resistance - from the first years after September 9, 1944, to the last months before the collapse of the regime. Participants will hear stories from different decades and places: from "Rucksy Street" and the arrests of young people with "indecent appearance" in the 1950s, through jazz and satire censored at BIAD and the Satirical Theater, to the Maxim Bar and the fate of violinist Sasho Sladura. In the later period, the route passes through the symbols of civil courage from the 1980s - the protests in Ruse, the Crystal Garden, "Sofia's Cinderella", and the first demonstrations in front of the National Assembly in the fall and winter of 1989.
In the autumn of 1944, at the end of World War II, a coup d'état established communist totalitarian rule in Bulgaria. Within just a few years, the country was transformed - the elite were sentenced to death or sent to camps and political prisons, a one-party state was established, and new repressive and propaganda structures were created, which penetrated every layer of society. The most terrifying face of the regime was State Security - formally a secret intelligence service, but in fact the main instrument of political repression. Arbitrary violence and control became a fundamental principle of governance, ruining hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. Today's buildings and familiar urban landmarks tell the story of the mechanisms of fear and subversion, with which the new regime built its totalitarian system.
The early 1990s marked the end of 45 years of communism and the beginning of the transition to democracy - a time of great change and uncertainty, but also of great hope for the future. Our route takes us back to the late 1980s, when the first rallies and marches began in Sofia, marking the end of the regime. Participants pass through the places where thousands of people first took to the streets with slogans calling for democracy and truth - Alexander Batenberg Square, the National Assembly, and the Crystal Garden. The atmosphere of change comes alive in the guides' narration. In times of crisis and challenge, the tour reminds us of the power of civil society to change the course of history and invites us to reflect on what freedom means today.
The historic Memory tram follows the central axis of Sofia, where key places associated with the repressions and mechanisms of communist power are located.
The route along tram lines №12 and №18 passes by the buildings of the former Directorate of the People's Militia and State Security, the Party House and the so-called "triangle of power", the Palace of Justice, and a number of other locations marked by political processes, violence, and control.
There are also places associated with ideological censorship and control over freedom of movement, as well as with the counterculture that emerged in the 1980s - "Popa", "Sinyoto", the first informal exhibitions and cafes. The journey presents Sofia as few people know it - and fewer still remember - through its traces in the communist era.