Perched atop a mountain peak in central Bulgaria, a giant UFO-like concrete monument, built to glorify the Balkan country’s communist rule, has been left to crumble since the totalitarian regime collapsed in 1989. Some 30 years later, a team of restorers from five European universities is working against time and weather to protect one of the largest modernist mosaics in Europe, while Bulgaria decides on the fate of the controversial monument. Behind the plan is Bulgarian architect Dora Ivanova, whose foundation won grants from the U.S. Getty Foundation to draw a conservation plan for the abandoned monument and its curved intricate mosaic panels depicting communist propaganda.
“We should not destroy everything that has been created in periods that we like or do not like or are traumatic but on the contrary, they should exist to remind us, to help us learn from the…