Central Square and the Roman Forum
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Transcript
Plovdiv’s Central Square brings the Roman forum into contact with twentieth-century planning. The ancient civic centre extended across this area; parts of it were exposed through modern archaeology while socialist-era redevelopment reshaped the surrounding public space.
That juxtaposition is important. Heritage policy often makes socialism disappear into the category “modern intrusion”, as though only ancient layers count as history. Yet twentieth-century Bulgaria transformed streets, housing, monuments and public institutions on a massive scale.
Archaeologists working in a living city constantly negotiate between preservation and current use. Expose too little and the past disappears. Expose everything and the city becomes an excavation trench with cafés.
Plovdiv’s layered character is therefore partly a result of deliberate modern choices about what to reveal.
The city beneath the city survives because the city above it keeps paying archaeologists.