The Bulgarian Coal Town 30 Minutes From Sofia

Pernik is thirty minutes from Sofia and almost nobody goes. It's where Bulgaria's first coal mine opened in 1891 — and where the electric light came on in 1895, five years before the capital. I spent a day walking the place: the main boulevard, the Underground Mining Museum (fifty metres down, inside the galleries of that first mine), the Memorial Complex, the socialist-era reliefs still on the walls, and the park by the river. I also ended up talking to a Vietnamese couple, which was not on the plan. A few things I found out: • Bulgaria's first coal mine, "Старите рудници," worked from 1891 until 1966. The museum sits inside its own galleries — roughly 630 metres of tunnel. • The museum opened on 26 August 1986. The idea came from Pernik miners who had visited the Wieliczka salt mine in Poland and wanted the same thing at home. • Electric lighting arrived in Pernik in 1895, with the mine's coal separation plant and the power station built to run it. Sofia's electrification began in 1900. • The Memorial of Mining Labour was inaugurated on 18 June 1982. Its original black gabbro cladding is no longer there. • Between 1949 and 1962 the town wasn't called Pernik at all. It was Dimitrovo. • Around 65,000 people live in the city today. The municipality was at its largest in the mid-1980s. #Bulgaria #Pernik #Balkans