Palace of Culture and Sports "Vasil Levski"

The Vasil Levski Palace of Culture and Sports in Veliko Tarnovo was built in 1984–85 for the eight-hundredth anniversary of the uprising of Asen and Peter. Architect Tanya Daskalova adapted an unrealised structural project for a complex combining sport and cultural performance. Construction finished on 15 November 1985, followed by a ceremonial spectacle directed by Plamen Kartalov on 16 November. Its movable seating and stage arrangements supported this mixed purpose. Subsequent activities have included music and dance performances, the Melody of the Year competition and major sporting events. Veliko Tarnovo, the medieval Bulgarian capital on the Yantra, holds its large-scale indoor events in this multipurpose hall on the modern side of the city, named — as so much in Bulgaria is — for the revolutionary Vasil Levski. Sport occupies most of its year. When music arrives it comes at civic scale: touring opera, gala and cross-genre productions that need a floor rather than a proscenium.