The abandoned Buzludzha Monument at Bulgaria

The Buzludzha Monument is a magnificent piece of architecture, located at Buzludzha in Central Stara Planina. It was built by the Bulgarian communist regime to commemorate the events of 1891, when the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement. The peak itself was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadzhi Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and the Turks in 1868. At one time, the Buzludzha Monument was the most celebrated monument dedicated to the socio-political movement of communism. Now, in the mountains of the Buzludzha National Park, it stands abandoned, vandalised, and devastated.

The saucer-shaped monument, designed by architect Georgi Stoilov, rises to a height of 107 m. More than 60 Bulgarian artists collaborated on the designs of murals for the site, and thousands of volunteers were involved in the construction process. It took almost seven years to complete.

In the 15 m high main hall of the memorial, a 500 sq m fresco displays portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Todor Zhivkov, the Bulgarian communist leader. The dome of the structure was covered with thirty tonnes of copper. Two 12 m stars of ruby glass were built on the top of the 70 m high pylon of the monument that symbolises a waving communist flag. The Soviet star that adorns the tower of Buzludzha was three times larger than that of the Kremlin. Scrawled above the main entrance in red paint, Latin characters spell out the phrase ‘forget your past’, flanked on either side by powerful socialist stanzas emblazoned in Bulgarian Cyrillic.


Bulgarian Communism came to an end in 1989 and immediately afterwards, the headquarters came into disuse. In 1991, the monument that still belonged to the ex-communist party was ceded to the state and was abandoned, looted and left to self-destruction.