1 July 2008 | The Madara Horseman – an eight-century rock relief near the town of Shumen emerged as the winning symbol with which Bulgarians wished their country to be associated, it became clear after the final results of a two-year-long campaign were announced recently.

The Madara Horseman, which received 25.44 per cent of the 1,058,473 votes, was closely followed by the Cyrillic alphabet (21.6 per cent), with the medieval Tsarevets Fortress in the town of Veliko Turnovo (15.03 per cent), the Bulgarian rose and rose oil (10.16 per cent) and the Rila Monastery (8.95 per cent) lagging further behind.

According to the organisers of the campaign, which is backed by businesses and state institutions, the Madara Horseman will be the symbol of the first Bulgarian euro coin. In addition, financial support for “the patriotic cause” continues to be collected, with which organisers say they intend to built a Bulgarian symbols park in the capital Sofia, create a travelling exhibition and manufacture promotional products in several languages about the Bulgarian symbols.

Another initiative of a smaller scale and perhaps lesser mass appeal, which also seeks to identify new Bulgarian symbols, is the on-going New Bulgarian Souvenir project, which BalkanTravellers.com reported on in May.

Organised by the non- governmental Foundation for New Culture and Plovdiv’s Sariev Gallery, the aim of this project is to come up with new symbols – or a fresh take on old ones, such as the infamous rose oil, which could then be designed and mass manufactured and sold as Bulgarian souvenirs.

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