Grigor Doytchinov
Fig. 3
The master plan, 1947, related
to the pre-war urban pattern.
The plan disrespects the
urban core pattern and the
emblematic religious objects.
(Doytchinov/Petev)the former ensemble. Fortunately the palace is not demolished. The plan
focuses also on the Cathedral square Sv. Alexander Nevski which is turned
into a symmetric and rectangular shape. The cathedral square is winning on
this way a dominant position in the system of public spaces, which doesn’t
correspond too much with the attempts of the communist ideology, trying
to set its symbols in a first range position. Despite of the ideas for a total
restructuring of the palace area and the monumentalizing of the cathedral
square, the plan is attracting attention with the preservation of the street
network of the former trade and business area in the urban core.^9
One of the points of criticism on the plan is the missing locations for the new
governmental objects including the Building of the Central Committee of the
Bulgarian Communist Party (the “Party House”). For all the ideas the Tonev-
plan bears, a competition for the reconstruction of the city centre is held very
soon in 1947 with great consequences for the urban core. The true reason for
carrying out a new competition is an ideological one. The political aim of the
communist government is to establish a representative centre demonstrating
the demarcation from the bourgeois past and the orientation to the socialist
future. This background explains the disrespectful handling of the inherited
urban patterns and the heritage. The ideological attitude towards the urbanism
results in disregarding the historically set tendency from the end of the 19th
century to locate the representative spaces and objects eastwards and