Hristo Ganchev, Grigor Doytchinov
The nomination of Sofia for capital city^29 is a decisive precondition for its speedy
growth.^30 The role of the capital is realised and its redesign arises to a question of
national prestige. The first regulation plan is elaborated by S. Amadier and Vladimir
Roubal in 1879.^31 The plan is based on the cadastre drown by foreign experts in
the same year and defines the city edges responding more or less to the defensive
trench from the Ottoman period.^32 The planners keep the main ancient directions
to Thessaloniki, Pautalia (Kyustendil), Germanea (Separeva Banya), Trimontium
(Plovdiv), Nansos (Nis) and the traces of the ancient Cardo and Decumanus,
defining the middle of the settlement over the centuries. As a result of this adaptive
attempt to the basic pre-modern patterns, the newly designed representative
central place crowned by the Sv. Nedelya Church, corresponds with the location
of the ancient Roman Forum and removes just a little bit southwards from the
core of the Ottoman settlement. The added surrounding boulevard is a recurring
element in the nineteenth century’s European urbanism repeated in Sofia and is
the precursor of the future ring road. The plan establishes the radial-ring-model
of Sofia and its mono-centrism. The organic medieval quarters in between the
main streets and the ring road are regardless transformed into an orthogonal grid.
The change of the spatial and architectural character starts immediately after the
Liberation and is accomplished more or less in four decades. The destroying of the
Ottoman traces is a calculated spiritual act of power, demonstrating the cultural
demarcation from the orient and the orientation to the west. For a short period the
oriental images are wiped out and the accents of the modern way of life arise. The
opening of the closed mahalas to the newly designed public spaces, until erasing
fully from the city’s shape, introduces the process of urban integration. The new
regulation creates the spatial preconditions for the formation and functioning of a
civil society and the protection of its interests.
Fig. 5
The regulation plan, 1892.
(Museum of Sofia)