Planning Capital Cities

Ottoman system and are declared to be a personal ownership of high-ranked

Turk dignitaries or of the sultan. During the Ottoman rule, also the forms of the

local monumental architecture are lost. It is only the tradition of the vernacular

timber construction which stays alive.^9

It would be, however, wrong to understand the reborn of the Bulgarian estate

as a spontaneous act or as a consequence of the Russian-Turkish War, 1877-

1878.^10 It is the result of a long-term process, designated as the Bulgarian
National Revival. It begins at the end of the eighteenth’s century, when the
Ottoman feudal order comes into an unstoppable decay and the positions of
the centralized power are more and more repressed. On the background of
these preconditions and the infiltration of the first forms of capitalist economy
the future subjects of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie start to ripen. A point of
reference in the revival process is the writing of the Slavic-Bulgarian History,
1762.^11 The awoken interest for the own history is thoroughly a presupposition
for the cultural consciousness and the Revival.^12

Some political preconditions are set already after the Russian-Turkish War in

1829, as well as the reformation acts of the Ottoman Empire in 1839 and 1856.^13

The national revolutionary movement and the struggle for the restoration of the

autocephaly of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, 1830-1856, mark the beginning

of the nation building process. As a result of the upcoming trade connections

with Europe, new expectations and trends of taste are arising in the young

local bourgeoisie, which is no more content with the retarded life standard.

The economic development leads to a private welfare and to a strengthening

of the national self-confidence. In 1878 the choice is made in the political and

cultural sense and the conditions for basic changes in the organisation of the

territory and the settlements are created. The last phase of the nation building

process comprises the establishing of the public institutions and the successful

Fig. 1
The rational regulation of
Stara Zagora is an initial step
and accepted model in the
modern Bulgarian Urbanism.
(Reproduction, Avramov)