Our private tour to Buzludzha from Plovdiv starts early in the morning when some of our tour leaders will meet you in your hotel. The way from Plovdiv to Buzludzha is not so long, only 123 km one way. The road is passing through some of the most interesting landmarks in Bulgaria as Kazanlak and the valley of the roses and the Thracian kings, the Shipka monument and the memorial church of Shipka and many small cute villages.
Our private tour to Buzludzha from Plovdiv is really flexible. If you want to combine your visit to Buzludzha from Plovidv with some other of the famous sights in Bulgaria just send us a inquiry and we will do our best to show you those places. Even if you would like your drop off location to be different than the starting point.
Tour availability:
The tour to Buzludzha is available during the whole year, but sometimes during the cold months there is a lot of snow in the mountain and the road to Buzludzha is blocked, because nobody clean it, of course. In this case you will probably need to hike for about 20 minutes – 1 hour (depending on the conditions). This is a part of the Buzluzdha adventure, so don’t worry! Our guides know where they are going.
Included: Transportation(fuel, VAT and taxes); Local tour guide/driver; Drop on/off from/to your accommodation
Excluded: Food and personal expenses
Total distance: 250 km.
Total driving time: 4 hours 30 minutes
More about the Buzluzdha Monument
In 2013, the largest monument from Socialist times, the Buzludzha Communist Party memorial, was included in the list of most beautiful abandoned places in the world. Unfortunately, for years the monument has been abandoned, and little has remained to show its beauty when it was inaugurated. Also called the Buzludzha tower, it rises on the peak of Hadzhi Dimitar, a complex consisting of a round structure plus a high pylon adorned by five pointed stars on either side.
When the monument was conceived, some other architectural projects gave inspiration for it, among which was a building of a church designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The money was raised by selling stamps, each of which cost 5 Bulgarian Leva, an amount which was not insignificant at that time. Many people gave their share to enable the Buzludzha construction to come true. The amount raised was 14 million Bulgarian Leva. When the time for the construction process came, there were a host of volunteers who participated in the building.
The construction process took seven years. Around 6,000 people worked on the site until the monument rose as a structure. The height of the hill was reduced by 10 meters before the very building process started. There was a decade between the initial Buzludzha project and the inauguration of a veritable gem of art. The inside of the monument was replete with mosaics and pictures. They depicted not only scenes from the history of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, but also scenes from everyday life in the country.
The monument was included in the list of 100 must-visit sites in Bulgaria, and people flocked to see the monument, tour the inside of the round hall and the corridor around it, and marvel at the tall pylon with the red stars. It was interesting for all the visitors to learn that the stars alone took 10 days to be mounted onto the pylon. Their weight is 3 and a half tonnes. They were made in Russia – artificial rubies, and were mounted by Russian specialists.
The round hall has a diameter of 60 meters and a height of 14 meters. It contained two concentric circles, the inner one of which had an area of 550 square meters. The mosaics inside the hall were made manually by dozens of artists: the preparation of the mosaics tool 18 months. The material for the mosaics was artificial, made in Ukraine. In the centre, eminent Socialists were depicted: Marx, Engels and Lenin, opposite whom were portrayed the Bulgarian Socialists Dimitar Blagoev, Georgi Dimitrov, and the then president of the Bulgarian Communist Party Todor Zhivkov.
Unfortunately, after the fall of communism in Bulgaria in 1989, the monument was repeatedly plundered and vandalized, and now it is derelict, though retaining its grandeur. The mosaics and the pictures were destroyed, and the windows were broken. Now the monument still rises as a majestic witness of many gatherings of Bulgarian Socialists, because it was there that in 1891 the beginning of Socialist movement in Bulgaria was laid.