Sofia

Sofia - darkometer rating : 4 - The capital city of Bulgaria and as such almost inevitably a starting point for tours of this country. But the city itself also has a number of things to offer the dark tourist, including a quirky old-fashioned military museum and a few gigantic memorials ranging from prime socialist realism glory to a crumbling piece of junk so unimaginably crappy that it's just hilarious. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: Quite a few things, though no really major dark sites. Still, one place warrants a separate entry of its own, the rest is covered in the text below. - Military Museum Apart from this, sites associated with the former communist regime will be of prime importance to most dark tourists. The largest of these is the former Party House, the communist party's central committee HQ. This is the closest Sofia ever got to a proper Stalinist-style pile, with its tall needle on top, which used to be crowned, Kremlin -style, by a massive red star, which was removed in 1990, however, and these days only flies a Bulgarian national flag. It's located on the corner facing Pl Nezavisimost in the centre. Another goner is the huge Lenin statue that used to stand on the column at the opposite, western end of the square; these days his place is occupied by a kitschy gold-faced statue of a female "St Sofia" figure brandishing a laurel wreath and an owl on her arms! Speaking of lost attractions, the single most significant of Sofia's lost places is the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum .