By Angela Rodel
Dimitrovgrad—most Bulgarians associate this city with one of two things: as a utopian town built by Socialist “Brigadiers” or as the birthplace of mythical pop-folk record label Payner Music. However, the city along the Maritsa River actually has a much deeper and richer history, as well as a vibrant present—which is why the municipality, in partnership with the American for Bulgarian Foundation, launched a competition for an upgrade to the Historical Museum—Dimitrovgrad. Two Bulgarian Fulbright alumnae are part of the winning team—architect Aneta Vasileva and cultural anthropologist Velislava Petrova. Below, they share some of their ideas about how to revitalize the museum so it more fully represents the town’s past, present, and future!
Q: What got you interested in Dimitrovgrad and how did you end up being part of this project?
V: My relationship with Dimitrovgrad is quite intriguing. I first set foot in the city in 2005 for my PhD fieldwork on urban marketplaces, as Dimitrovgrad hosts the largest open-air market in Bulgaria (some would say in the Balkans as well). The idea actually came from my supervisor, Ivaylo Ditchev, and when I first arrived, I had no idea what to expect. I only knew that the market operated at night. I was young, and to be honest, I was a little afraid.
My first night in the field was quite strange. But I soon became fascinated by what I was observing. I started making regular field trips and was already moving toward the final conclusions of my research when, on my way back from Istanbul, I stopped in Dimitrovgrad one last time. What I discovered was a completely different marketplace from the one I had been studying. Then I returned seven years later and found the same town, yet somehow transformed. Seven years after that, I returned again. It was then that I learned about the competition for the new museum exhibition and called Aneta. I think that is the most powerful thing about Dimitrovgrad: its ability to change while remaining itself, to absorb new imaginaries and continuously reinvent what it can be.
A: My first acquaintance with Dimitrovgrad was around 2010 through an old magazine called Architecture and Construction from 1953 which I came across quite by chance in an attic. There we found all the exquisite hand drawings and watercolor perspectives of the soon-to-be flagship new town of socialist Bulgaria—Dimitrovgrad. At the time the discovery was just a peculiarity within the winding road Bulgarian architecture has been taking throughout the 20th century.
But then Dimitrovgrad reappeared in my life—in a much broader, this time European context. In 2011 the city became a partner in the European project ATRIUM—Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes of the 20th Century in Urban Management, which continued until June 2013. It brought together 11 countries from Southeastern Europe (Italy, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Greece) with the aim of creating a transnational cultural route to focus public attention on the architectural history of the 20th century with a special focus on dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. The project resulted in an official Cultural Route approved by the Council of Europe in 2014.
Dimitrovgrad was both a partner and a strong case study in ATRIUM and still preserves its ties within the later established ATRIUM Foundation. After that I’ve never stopped researching and studying many aspects of the town while working on my PhD on Bulgarian socialist architecture and later on—while teaching the history, theory and aspects of preservation of the architecture of the period.
And then Velislava called—a competition had been announced! About the only museum in Bulgaria where architecture is of top importance and the only one which tells primarily the story of socialism (and post-socialism) in Bulgaria. We decided we had to gather a team and participate. And, in March 2025, we won!
Q: What does the current History Museum in Dimitrovgrad focus on, and what are your ideas/themes/concepts for expanding its narrative?
V: The current exhibition is organized around two main halls: one dedicated to the Brigadier movement and the construction of the city, and the other to the broader history of Dimitrovgrad. There are two things I particularly appreciate about it. First, it incorporates relatively recent history and presents it through local experiences and imaginaries. Second, I greatly value the way the museum staff narrate the exhibition. The museum guides, who have lived through many of the transformations they describe, offer a remarkably nuanced and thoughtful account of the city’s past.
We also discovered that a large part of the museum’s collection consists of donations from local residents, which shows how important and central the museum remains for the community. So we decided to build on these strengths while broadening and layering the story, adding new knowledge and perspectives, and above all strengthening the participatory dimension of the museum.
There are two good examples. The first concerns the story of the city’s construction, which is usually narrated through the Brigadier movement. However, our historian Alexander Vezenkov showed that the city was built not only by volunteers, but also through the labor of largely invisible construction workers: military labor troops, prisoners, and paid workers. This allows us to tell a richer and more complex story about how the city actually came into being.
The second example is the participatory wall, an anthropological and interactive tool that invites visitors to reflect on the city’s past, present, and future, while also contributing their own memories, experiences, and perspectives.
But the central question here is: what new things will the visitor learn that are not already present in the current exhibition? I think the change is more conceptual than factual. First, visitors will see how different generations revisit and reconceptualize the city’s own history. So it is not the 1990s per se, nor simply the new layers that we are introducing. Rather, it is the possibility to understand how the meaning of Dimitrovgrad has continuously been reimagined by the people who have lived there. The city is no longer presented as a finished historical project, but as a place whose meanings have constantly been negotiated, challenged, and reinvented through different historical moments and local imaginaries.
- Today, museums are organized not as passive showcases of the past, but as experiences for the public. Their primary mission is to draw visitors into their narrative, hold their attention, surprise them with things they didn’t know, and inspire them to learn more. Our concept for the new exhibition is based precisely on this contemporary vision of the museum. The project’s goal is to recreate the city’s complex and exciting history using modern methods, making it interesting, understandable, and memorable for all visitor groups.
The task is complex, yet highly appealing, because Dimitrovgrad is, in and of itself, a unique living museum. I still believe that the most important strength of our concept is the respect and care shown to the city’s history. We do care about the people, about the place and about its multilayered history. And we want to preserve all periods and aspects of this history, while also supplementing and developing them to the fullest extent possible.
Q: What is one thing that surprised you about Dimitrovgrad when you were doing the research for this project?
A: Oh, so many things. I was convinced that I know everything about this town and especially about its architecture after 15 years of writing about it and designing projects about it – and then, while digging even deeper during this past year, some of my strongest beliefs as an architectural historian were completely reimagined. And I was intrigued again by this place which is constantly reimagining itself.
It turns out that any attempt to uniquely assign Dimitrovgrad to the relevant narrative of the time is confronted with the innate ambiguity of the city and the multilayered, often unconscious or unfixed identity of its inhabitants. And this is what makes Dimitrovgrad not just an urban utopia, neither a mere product of socialist realism, nor the standard totalitarian or contested heritage. But something different and even more intriguing.
V: It is difficult to be surprised by Dimitrovgrad when your starting hypothesis is that it will always surprise you. But for me, it was the level of local involvement, how important the museum is to the local population. We saw this both through the materials people donate (objects, but also personal stories told by schoolchildren) and through the emotions that the future of the museum generates.
Q: How will this new museum differ from traditional Bulgarian local museums?
V: I would say it will be the first of its kind, but hopefully one of many. Technologically, it is very advanced, but what is more challenging is that, as we are dealing with a recent and emotionally charged past, we dream of creating a space where different narratives, emotions, and worldviews can meet and be discussed, questioned, and reimagined.
A: By the opportunity to tell not only the history of the past, but also to spark a conversation about the future.
Q: Who is the prime target audience for your newly conceptualized museum?
V: For me, it is the local population, because museums are contact zones, places where you can learn about your past, but also because when we create a town museum, we should first consider those who live there. However, the exhibition is planned through different layers, and we believe we will be able to tell the story of Dimitrovgrad to people beyond the town as well. We also think it will be particularly interesting to foreign visitors, as it tells several intertwined stories: the creation of a new town, the socialist dream and its collapse, the turbulent transformations of the 1990s, the emergence of new markets, economies and cultural forms, and the city’s continuous reinvention up to the present day.