site.btaSofia Local Authorities Use Help from Graffiti Artists to Give Facelift to Public Areas

The local authorities in Sofia are using help from graffiti artists to give a facelift to public spaces and buildings. Subways and other public areas will be cleaned up and transformed with graffiti. "We want to provide more space for artists where they will be free to create without breaking the rules, and we will thus show that our city can be clean and inspiring with the creativity of its residents and artists," Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev said in a Facebook post Tuesday.

An extra BGN 300,000 from the municipal budget has been provided for the purpose.

According to the Mayor, "graffiti can change the way the city looks and give it a new life". "This is what we are trying to show together with more than 60 talented graffiti artists who transformed the wall of Sofia's ISUL hospital," he wrote.

As part of the project, 30 trash containers have been covered with graffiti. "They turned into pieces of art, real beautiful as they sit at key locations in Sofia," Terziev said. 

An overpass on a major thoroughfare will soon be painted with images of Bulgarian sport legends. 

In the Mayor's words, "the city gets transformed through the eyes of the artists to become what all people dream it to be: green, full of life, with wise messages that make us thing".