The stone block
A truncated pyramid under a bronze figure.
Neriyana Ivanova โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท VladislavNedelev โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Hans Birger Nilsen โ CC BY-SA 2.0
After the Ottoman defeat by Russia in 1878, the Treaty of San Stefano provided for a large Bulgaria reaching the Aegean. Britain and Austria-Hungary rejected it, fearing wide Russian influence in the Balkans, so the **Treaty of Berlin** the same year redrew the borders: a small principality in the north, the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia in the south under the sultan, and Macedonia returned to direct Ottoman rule. That division shaped Bulgarian politics for a century and was a cause of the later Balkan wars. The union of 1885 was the first undoing of it.
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The Monument of the Unification is a massive truncated-pyramid block of stone in Unification Square in central Plovdiv, topped by a bronze female figure with carved forms around its base. What it commemorates is a distinctly Plovdiv event. When Bulgaria became independent in 1878 it was divided in two at the Congress of Berlin: the principality of Bulgaria in the north, and the province of **Eastern Rumelia** in the south under nominal Ottoman sovereignty, with Plovdiv as its capital. On **6 September 1885** local revolutionaries carried out an almost bloodless coup in Plovdiv and declared the two united โ and the fact was accepted internationally after a short war with Serbia. That day is a Bulgarian national holiday, and Plovdiv is its city. The monument was raised in 1985 for the centenary, and the ceremonies are held in front of it every year. **A free public space**, with the city hall, the exhibition building and a fountain around the square.
A truncated pyramid under a bronze figure.
City hall, the exhibition building and a fountain around it.
Unification Square, Plovdiv