Jason Kottke linked to this incredible photoset by Timothy Allen of the Buzludzha Monument in Bulgaria. It was opened in 1981 to celebrate the beginnings of organised socialism in the country 90 years earlier, and it is everything you’d expect from a thumping great monument to communism. From some angles it looks like a World War Ⅱ defence post, from above it resembles part of an Olympic venue, complete with oversized torch for the ceremonial flame, and to many people it’s as if a flying saucer landed on the hillside. A concrete flying saucer. To anyone who’s ever seen a Bond movie, well, that’s clearly a SPECTRE hangout, right there. Taking a closer look, the outside is decorated with a glorious relief of socialist slogans set in gigantic concrete Cyrillic lettering, a lot of which seems to be missing now.
Pictures from the Timothy Allen article, © him.
Inside there were mosaics celebrating the usual themes and noteworthy characters of international socialism, and in the ceiling above the debating chamber, a geometric hammer and sickle, surrounded with the call for the proletariat of the world to unite. Again, a lot of the interior has been stripped out by trophy hunters, vandals, or simply ruined by the weather. Needless to say, the monument isn’t being maintained by the Bulgarian government, and in 2011 they ‘gifted’ the entire structure to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, who hope to restore it someday.
In researching this article, I found a couple of other articles and photo collections on the monument, one by Arch Daily, and the other here on Kuriositas.