The Nikola Vaptsarov Museum was opened for visitors on 6 May 1956. It is housed in the poet’s last Sofia home where he lived with his wife and his brother’s family between 1940 and 1942. It is in this home that the poet wrote some of his most powerful verses after Motor Songs (‘Motorni pesni’) was published and here he edited the Literature Critic (‘Literaturen kritik’) newspaper. The rented home was centre of his conspirative anti-fascist activity because of which he was arrested on 4 March 1942 and consequently taken away. 10 years after his death the poet’s close friends and family gave away to Bulgaria the home he used to inhabit so that it became a museum. It is administratively subordinated to the National Literature Museum in Sofia.

 

The museum preserves the largest portion of Nikola Vaptsarov’s archive – notebooks, manuscripts and photographs from his pupil years, his personal library, translations of his poems in more than 30 languages, a lot of his personal belongings. There is also a rich collection of portraits and illustrations by Bulgarian and foreign artists.

 

The museum also preserves the World Peace Prize that Nikola Vaptsarov was posthumously awarded in 1952.