The Prince’s Garden and The Soviet Army Monument in Sofia: After the Steps of the Past

Have you already discovered the Prince’s Garden in the center of Sofia?

It is a small park situated at a walking distance from St. Kliment Ohridsky Sofia University, the subway station with the same name and Borisova Gradina Park.

This blog post is dedicated to the changes and the transformations of the Prince’s Garden and one of its monuments.

Back in the times of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom in 1936 this small park in the center of Sofia was the so-called Royal Garden for the kids. At that time it was one of the favourite places of the kids of Sofia. Earlier in 1888 in the same garden started the history of the zoo in Sofia. The current Sofia Zoo opened its doors for visitors in 1984 and it could be found outside of the center of Sofia. The first Sofia zoo turned into reality thanks to a special decree issued by Prince Ferdinand I in 1887. The decree arranged the construction of the Royal Zoological Garden within the Royal Botanical Garden which was the present-day Prince’s Garden.

During the socialist regime in Bulgaria the monument dedicated to the Soviet Army was placed in the same garden in 1954, exactly 10 years after the Socialist regime in Bulgaria started. The monument  positioned on a pedestal  depicted the 8 meters high composition of the figures a soviet soldier, Bulgarian man from the working class and a woman with a child in her hands. The monument was part of a bigger monument complex that spread around.

In the last couple of decades after the end of the socialist regime in Bulgaria that took place at the end of 1989, there are still many debates in Bulgarian society around the destiny of this monument.

Nowadays while on a nice walk in the Prince’s Garden in Sofia you will not be able to find these three figures part of the Soviet Army Monument and once there you will notice that the space around the monument is surrounded by fences. In fact the Soviet Army Monument was in the Prince’s Garden until December 2023 when the demontage work of it started and was finalized for a couple of days.

Have a look at the small visual diary below built out of pictures that were captured in the timeline between 2019 and 2026 and track how the Soviet Army monument and the area around it have changed over these years.

Pictures personal archive

If you are curious about socialist regime in Bulgaria (1944-1989), you could find more in the TRIPSTOTAKE. blogpost dedicated to the emblematic Buzludzha house-monument of the Bulgarian communist party built back in 1981.

And just another idea if in Sofia you could check the collection of The Museum of Socialist Art and Monuments especially if you want to explore from closer some of the artefacts preserved from this particular historical period of the recent Bulgarian history.

And now let’s travel, discover, repeat!