The Construction of the Sofia Largo in the 50s of the 20th Century and the Aborted Plans to Destroy the St Nedelia Church and the Banya Bashi Mosque

Abstract

The reconstruction activities in Sofia after World War II enabled the country’s
communist leadership to initiate a comprehensive „socialist reconstruction“
of the city centre in the spirit of the Socialist Realism that dominated
in the 50s of the twentieth century. These ambitious plans were aimed at
both the construction of new buildings, as well as the destruction of certain
individual iconic buildings whose future existence would be contradictory
to the symbols that should form the new socialist character of the city centre.
Among those were the Sveta Nedelia Church, the Sveta Petka Samardjiiska
Church, the Banya Bashi Mosque and the former royal palace. The present
paper focusses namely on their fate during the reconstruction of the city
centre, as well as on what lead to their preservation despite the otherwise
categorical initial intentions.