representative public buildings of semantic value are located in the east,
in the urban segment between the core and the ring road, forming up the
monumental part of the city. The zoning follows consequently the tendency
of the city development: Its eastern and southern hilly parts are characterised
with a building stock of higher capital and aesthetic value than the ones in
the western and northern parts. While the eastern and southern parts are
extending step by step, accompanied by a continuous punctual modernisation
and densification by the exchange of the stock, the western and northern ones
are planned and established in a short period for sheltering the migration
wave and the future working class strata. They are characterised with buildings
of lower quality and the densification happens by new additions and not by
exchange. The development differences are an expression of the social zoning,
but define also the possibilities for intervention: while the first type is resistant
of large scaled interventions, the second one offers as a space potential for
total interventions after WW II.^3 The image of the urban core’s heart is defined
by two public places separated by a block: the places around the Sv. Nedelya
Church in the south and the Bania Bashi Mosque and the Central Batch in the
north. The square Sv. Nedelya Church is planned after the Liberation 1878 to be
the representative central place with a clearly defined frame, while the square
with the mosque in front of the bath is more or less an Ottoman period relict,
continuously established as the focal point of the settlement. Both places keep
traditional peculiarities.Fig. 1
Sofia’s urban core and the
limitation of the antique
Roman city. The core is in the
eve of WW II the trade and
business heart of the city. The
representative buildings of
semantic value are located
eastwards to the ring road.
(Doytchinov/Petev)