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MONUMESofi Meglena Parvin, Curator of the Antiquity Collection of Historical Museum in the Bulgarian town of Kazanlak, has called for the fortification of the town’s Thracian mounds.

Parvin made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Kazanlak following a visit to the mounds by journalists attending the 18th World Meeting of the Bulgarian Media in the area.

The curator said: “There is need to improve the protective buildings of the tombs and to talk about the monuments all over the world.”

The journalists had on Saturday visited more than five historical monuments as part of events scheduled for the meeting in Kazanlak, a town on the outskirts of Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.

• Some of the visiting journalists walking up the stairs towards one of the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak being housed by a mound.

Among the monuments visited are the “Tower” Ethnographic Complex, the Kazanlak Tomb, the Rose Museum, “The Big Hairy” Thracian mound — a heap of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves — and the mounds of Shushmanets, Griffins, and Helvetia.

The Thracian mound Helvetia dated from the middle of the fourth century Before Christ.

In 1996, George Kitov, an archeologist discovered it in the southern periphery of the mound.

Parvin further told NAN that the tombs which used to house the bodies of the Thracian kings were important to the development of the economy of Bulgaria.

According to Parvin, because the mounds and the graves beneath them had become historical monuments, they had become strategic to developing the Bulgarian economy through tourism.

“Tourists can come and visit the monuments and through that the country can generate income from them,” she said.

“They are more than 2,000 years old and are connected to the Thracian tribe,” the curator added.

NAN reports that the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak is among the first Bulgarian monuments included in 1979 in the UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site List.

The tomb is world-renowned for its one-of-a-kind frescoes.

The whole concept of blended architecture and murals, as well as the unique style and craftsmanship of the artist, make the tomb of Kazanlak one of the masterpieces of the Thracian art and the cultural heritage antiquity.(NAN)

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