Our first project: TOUR OF SHAME

From the very start, we called our tours showing the important architectural buildings from the beginning of XIXc. “Tours of Shame”, purposely using the strong word  “shame”, indicating the stand we took that it is inadmissible for  the history of our country be neglected and slowly erased and thus lost for the future generations.

Recent Bulgarian history does not acknowledge the first architects who created the look of Sofia as a modern European capital. For that reason, In 2020 we decided to celebrate 150 years  from the birth of one of our most amazing architects – Nikola Lazarov. Lazarov got a degree in  architecture from École Spéciale d’Architecture a Paris, France and was  a renown European architect. His work was so significant that during his lifetime he was called “The Architect of Sofia”. The sad reality is that neither Bulgarians, nor the foreigners in Bulgaria, know of the architects that built Sofia in the past.

We, along with our partners from the advertising agency McCann – Bulgaria, decided to present several series of European and Bulgarian architects to an audience of foreigners.  We prepared French, German, Italian and a Jewish tours, as the cultural and architectural traditions of these countries contributed to the reconstruction of Sofia,  as well as to other big cities in Bulgaria. The tours are led by professional guides who are speakers of the languages of those countries.

Due to the pandemic of 2020, our project was postponed to the Spring of 2021. The first tour took place on April of the same year on the International Day of Monuments  of  Culture. For  us that is a very special day, as it helps to remember that our cultural monuments are unfortunately being totally neglected by the society and the state. As a result of that neglect, some of the old buildings are in very poor condition. Their owners do not maintain them in good shape on purpose, hoping they would be destroyed by being exposed to the elements of nature, such as rain and snow, as well as by “accidental” fires. Then they can “legally” demolish them and use the central spots for new modern buildings.

The French tour, which was dedicated to architect Nikola Lazarov,  was visited by many foreigners as well as by the French, Swiss and Brazilian Ambassadors. Most of the buildings designed by Lazarov, are located in the historic center of the capital. Several of them – beautiful examples of architecture – are in very bad condition  and are threatened by demolition. The Swiss Ambassy dedicated a whole page commenting on the idea of the tour by using superlatives and being supportive of our initiative. All subsequent tours were very well attended and the audiences showed strong interest in the topic.

We continued in the fall of 2021 with the Italian Tour.

In September 2021 our project was nominated for an award at the Bulgarian advertising festival “FARA”. This is a great recognition for the project and for our partners – the International advertising Agency McCann.