Culture Minister Stefan Danailov unveiled a refurbished exhibition hall at the ministry with an exposition of scaled models, part of the project "Bulgaria in Miniatures". Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia News Agency)
More than 20,000 people have visited the Bulgaria in Miniatures exhibition to see scaled models of some of the country's most spectacular historic and cultural sites.
After travelling across the country for about a year, now the exhibition has found a permanent host at the refurbished "Sredets" exhibition hall at the Culture Ministry.
Along with Tuesday's inauguration, the author of the project Suni Suninski unveiled the fiftieth item in the collection showing the historic ship Radetzki.
The ultra-realistic design does accommodate on a flat hand some of key turning points in Bulgarian history, culture and personalities, as well as several of most intriguing archaeological findings in recent years.
The models are sized between 60 and 120 cm. The artful lighting, the hidden loudspeaker boxes and the human figures in the surroundings are meant to obtain a vivid picture of the respective historical epoch.
The exhibition is to cover 30 cultural monuments, including the Rila Monastery, the medieval fortress Tsarevets of Turnovo, Bulgaria's smallest town of Melnik with the sandstone pyramids surrounding it, the ancient theatres in Plovdiv and many other culture-historical sites of interest.
The project is designed to present Bulgaria as a tourist destination with a thousand-year old history and various culture traditions, Suni Suninski explained.