Optimism for Bulgaria

The route from Western Europe to Istanbul has passed through the Bulgarian town of Harmanli for centuries, and locals have long provided food and shelter to passing travelers—a tradition reflected in the town’s name.

Giving and altruism were an important part of life in Oryahovo and Bulgaria before 1944 and helped build many of the country’s major institutions, according to the book A Window to Goodwill, a chronicle of philanthropic initiatives in the Danubian city from the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century.

Dimana Trankova is an archaeologist by education and a journalist by vocation. She joined Vagabond Media in 2006 and is currently an editor at Vagabond, Bulgaria’s English-language magazine, where she writes about travel and local culture in Bulgaria, the Balkans, and beyond. She is a coauthor of a series of non-fiction books and guidebooks on the historical, archaeological, and cultural heritage of Bulgaria in English and Bulgarian, and the author of the novels The Smile of the Dog (2014) and The Empty Cave (2017).

Scott W. Briggs, AIA, is Associate Principal at SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership, New York. His work is focused on cultural planning and design projects that integrate architecture, exhibitions, interpretation, graphics, and media to create engaging visitor experiences.

Assistant Professor Elena Kantareva-Decheva is the deputy director of the Ancient Plovdiv Institute. She is a painter-restorer and lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv. Since 2015, she has headed the team that restored the mosaics of the Bishop’s Basilica of Philippopolis.

Nikolay Tonkoff is a graphic designer and founder of formschlag, a design company based in Berlin and Sofia with over 25 years of experience in crafting corporate visual identity. The formschlag team worked on some of the most recognizable Bulgarian brands such as Bulgarian National Television, BG Radio, Nova Television, and the Golden Rhyton Film Festival. International clients include Shell, BMW, Daimler, and L’Oréal. Nikolay is the author of the Bishop’s Basilica of Philippopolis logo and other visual elements.

FourPlus were among half a dozen businesses that worked on the Basilica interactives, but the Sofia-based design and motion graphics studio was instrumental in connecting all the creative work into one coherent whole — “a job they did with remarkable success,” according to Diana Trifonova, program officer at ABF, who managed the Basilica’s interactive elements for the Foundation.

Crediting the work of all who lent muscle power to this project would cover a full basilica floor layer or fill a good-size book. This photo story celebrates them all and is a reminder that a project of such monumental proportions is the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of anonymous ALEs.

History in particular might benefit from VR reconstructions, according to Yavor Bonev, founder of Animajor Studios, the company behind the VR reconstruction of the Bishop’s Basilica of Philippopolis and the world’s first ever VR-enhanced city tour (of Vienna, Austria).