Quite interesting building in many perspectives.
Finished in 1981, it was part of a giant project for celebrating 1300 years from the foundation of Bulgaria.

Initially, it was named after the daughter of the former communist leader Todor Zhivkov – Lyudmila Zhivkova who at that time was also Bulgaria’s Minister of Culture.

After the political changes in 1990, the building was renamed to National Palace of Culture or NDK (Natsionalen Dvorets na Kulturata).

The architect is Alexander Barov who has used lots of concrete for materializing his ideas.
Inside the building you will find several halls with the biggest one of them containing 5000 seats.
The huge corridors are often used for fairs and exhibitions.

There are 3 underground floors and on one of them you can take a walk around conveniently organized shops. The entrance for them is from the underpasses in front of the building itself.

A friend of mine says that the building is actually a spaceship after wreckage, to me is more like a huge billboard having advertisements on all of its sides.

Nevertheless, it is curious to note that NDK has more steel in its foundations than the Eiffel Tower in Paris – 20 000 tons. Also, once I spoke with a porter who claimed that has been working all his life there and he was eager to share that NDK has two or three secret passage ways that he even did not know. His example was with Condoleezza Rice’s visit who suddenly popped up right in the conference hall. Cool!

Inseparable parts of the whole complex are the Lovers’ Bridge and the NDK’s Monument which is about to be demolished soon. See NDK map here.