bg Stara Zagora

Nikolai Liliev House

- Petar Parcevich Street 38 -
The residential building is the birthplace of the famous Bulgarian symbolist poet and playwright Nikolai Liliev, whose real name is Nikolay Mihailov Popivanov. He was born on May 26, 1885, in Stara Zagora, into a family of hereditary teachers and priests. He received his primary education in his hometown and then graduated from a commercial high school in in 1903. At the end of 1903, his literary interests were manifested already during his school years, but the impetus for his poetic expression was given by the meeting with . In the period between 1905 and 1906, he followed three semesters of literature in , from where he sent poems to multiple magazines. In 1907, he was a clerk in , where he met the founder of the Tolstoy commune, as well as , , and , with whom his creative destiny was connected.

In the fall of 1909, Liliev won a competition and went to , where he studied commercial sciences with a scholarship from the Ministry of Commerce. From Paris, he sends poems that Podvrzachev and Debelyanov publish in multiple magazines. During the , he was mobilized as a civilian in Stara Zagora. In 1914, he participated in poems, translations, and criticism in each of the five books of the magazine called Zveno. During the , he was a private and a correspondent. After the war, he worked in the Directorate for Economic Concerns and Public Foresight, in the publishing house of , in the Press Directorate of the Foreign Ministry, and in various editorial offices.
Nikolai Liliev
From the autumn of 1924 to 1928 and from 1934 he was a dramatist at the National Theater in . As a playwright at the National Theater, he left a lasting mark on Bulgarian theater culture. His presence proved particularly stimulating for the development of Bulgarian drama. It attracts the best Bulgarian writers and translators to the cause of the theater. After the communist coup on , 1944, his poetry was doomed to oblivion and rejection by official communist literary criticism. Nikolai Liliev died on October 6, 1960, at the age of 75, in Sofia.

In 2016, it was bought by the Municipality of Stara Zagora, and in 2018, a restoration was carried out by the Bulgarian architect Ivan Ivanov, which changed its color from green to sandy yellow.
An old photo that shows the building
The building is built in a style that resembles a Swiss chalet but also features some geometric Art Nouveau elements. The top gable on the south side of the building is adorned with a and underneath the other parts of the roof, you can see . The window frames, the , as well as the ornaments that are placed on the are embellished with . The baluster, the barred windows, as well as the roof terrace railing contain wrought iron .
The building before the restoration of 2018