Today it houses a popular clothing and accessories brand, and at the bottom you can admire exposed parts of the Roman Stadium

 

As Nikola Alvadzhiev wrote in his Plovdiv Chronicle, in the years before the old building was built on the central square by the architectural studio Sava Ovcharov-Yordan Yordanov, postal services in Plovdiv were carried out on the second floor of the large building of Kovo. It is one of the impressive representatives of Art Deco architecture on Main Street. It was built between 1926 and 1930 with the project of the architect Hristo Peev. Although not in the purest Art Deco style, we still see a strong emphasis on these elongated forms and lines that run uninterrupted through the entire facade.

In the space of the post there, however, there was a lack of spacious and comfortable lounges, as well as even the most ordinary premises for the technical services. Nevertheless, the clerks worked quite quickly and efficiently. They stuck to their positions for years, and some even reached retirement having always done the same job. The letter-carriers never changed. For years they traveled around their assigned areas and got to know the people living there quite well. Since they could provide quite comprehensive information about the families, the town halls often resorted to their services when lists and other documents were drawn up.

At that time, correspondence was insignificant, money transfers - rare, telephone posts could also be counted on the fingers of one hand, but still - this was one of the most important establishments in Plovdiv.

Currently, the building houses a store of a well-known Swedish brand, which owns Europe's largest clothing retail network. A few years ago, part of the archeology of the Roman Stadium was revealed under it - a large number of marble seats, some of them decorated with a relief image of lion paws, 100% of the marble orthostat in this segment of the stadium, base row, supporting structure of the seats - brick and a stone one, a staircase with five steps preserved in situ, a water tank and three street aqueducts belonging to the water distribution system of early Byzantine Philippopolis. A stone vault is preserved in situ in the fourth, southernmost axis of the exposed part. This vault of large, stone blocks is one of a kind and speaks of the high level of construction skills of the ancient Romans.

The excellently preserved central grandstand of the 240-meter-high structure, built in the second century in the ancient city, is unique because of the inscriptions indicating the places of dignitaries among the spectators. There is another inscription on one of the seats which indicates that the hymn singers probably sat on it. People who sang hymns in the Roman Empire were usually very close to the imperial box.

So today you can see the sights while shopping, and thus immerse yourself even more in the atmosphere of ancient Plovdiv.

We later found out from old footage that there was also a post office at the place where they now sell stuffed potatoes near the Drama Theater and a popular pharmacy chain.

In its current form, the Plovdiv Central Post Office, located on Central Square, wasn’t opened until the 1970s, when the city's needs for telephone, postal and telegraph services increased. By the end of the 70s, the Post Office was already functioning at full capacity.

A curious fact is that the new building was designed by architects Zhelyazko Stoykov and Petya Kovacheva. Zhelyazko Stoykov is the son of Stoyko Stoykov, with whose project the cult Kudoglu House was built - and subsequently demolished because of the Post Office.