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The planning of the city after the National Revival period (1878) is already a responsability of people with engineer and architect's degree and at the beginning those are Austrians,Swiss, Italians, Czechs, Frenchs, but after 1890 there are Bulgarian engineers too. The young Bulgarian clarks invest in buildings on the right bank of the river- the two big administrative buildings are built here - the District Assembly and the Men's High School. In 1892 Lucien Chevalas, preparing Plovdiv for the First International Agricultural Exhibition, creates a wonderful park on the place of the old Turkish Cemetory. After the exhibition, with an order of the Knyaz it was named "Tzar Simeon" and handed over to the Plovdiv people.

   

The first conflict of the inherited reality of Plovdiv leaving the Orient with the new European ideal is the new plan of the Plovdiv city by Joseph Schnitter, approved in 1896. It is him we owe the radial connection of the Railway Station with the centre of the city, which forms today's central part, the idea of greening the hills and what is more - take into consideration the things built by our ancestors. From Ottoman Middle Ages settlement Plovdiv turns into a modern town.

  From the beginning of 20th century through to the 30's the Plovdiv architecture is influenced by the Secession with an abundance of decorative elements Typical of this period are buildings from the Railway Station along the Ivan Vazov Street and the Main Street up to the Jumaya.
The development of the city goes out of control when after the Neuilly Treaty, which marks the end of the First World War, waves of refugees arrive in Plovdiv from Macedonia, Thrace and the Rhodope Mountains area. The homeless people are forced to squat on plots and begin illegal building without any plans and orderly street systems. The efforts of taking this chaos under control were further hindered of the 1928 earthquake that ruins one-third of the buildings. A new plan is drawn up in 1942-1944 by Professor Herman Jansen from the Dresden Polytechnincs but it is not applied because of the political changes in Bulgaria.
   

After 1944 the architecture competitions of the 50's show a tendency of closeness with the Stalin era architecture without taking into consideration the Plovdiv traditions. The expansion of the city as an industrial centre in the 60's puts new practical planning tasks - increasing of the existing city territory, which led to multistore building and connecting of the new residential areas with the industrial ones.

  The new General Urban Plan of 1968 is drawn up to solve those problems. It's most important disadvantage is ignoring Maritza River as an element of the city centre, but this is the plan Plovdiv follows to this day. As a part of its transport facilities the"Rhodope" Bridge was built in 1999. After the often megalomanic and soulless architecture creations imposed by the Communist ideologists and party functionaries, the architecture in Plovdiv begins returning to its own self in the 90's. For now the reconstructions and the rapid individual residential building take the biggest part of the plan.
   

/to be continued/...