Bounded by the Balkan and Rhodope Mountains, the Thracian Valley has always been a natural homeland. The modern city of Plovdiv only continues an ancient legacy of settlement in the region. The city was founded in 342 BC as Philippopolis by the father of Alexander the Great over an existing Thracian settlement. It would eventually grow into one of the most prosperous cities in the Roman Empire, and soon the entire valley was filled with Roman cities, such as Hisarya (Diocletianopolis) and Stara Zagora (Ulpia Augusta Traiana). The fall of the Roman Empire saw the region depopulated and repopulated several times, and these great cities fell into ruin. Plovdiv would remerge as a minor Bulgarian settlement in the Middle Ages until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.

As the capital of the Thracian Valley, or Eastern Rumelia, as the Ottomans referred to it, the city grew, and the region once prospered again. As a result of its prosperity, the city was filled with avenues of stately homes and mosques, and the city was a center of the arts. Likewise, it is fair to call the city Bulgarian, as on the eve of Bulgarian Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, Bulgarians comprised 45% of the population, with the rest split between ethnic Turks and Greeks.

Following the final unification of Rumelia with Northern Bulgaria in 1885, the city and the region would play a critical role in forming a Bulgarian national identity. The city’s charming architecture and cultural heritage would define the entire country’s visual identity going forward. 16th and 17th-century homes of the Bulgarian elite in Plovdiv were used as templates for the emergent Bulgarian Revivalist Style. This continues into the modern period, with much Modernist Architecture built under the communist regime reflecting this style.