Old Town Revival Houses
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Transcript
The ornate houses of Plovdiv’s Old Town represent the wealthy urban culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the city was part of the Ottoman Empire and known as Filibe.
Buildings such as Balabanov House, reconstructed in the twentieth century after an earlier house was demolished, also remind us that heritage districts are curated. Not every “old” interior is an untouched survivor.
During the Bulgarian National Revival, prosperous merchants and intellectuals increasingly sponsored Bulgarian-language education, churches and cultural institutions. Plovdiv became important in the politics that followed Ottoman rule.
The houses combine Ottoman urban traditions, Balkan craft and European influences. Trying to assign every decorative feature one pure national origin is usually less useful than tracing the merchant networks that paid for it.
Rich merchants have always been excellent at turning international influence into local tradition.