Living Communist History at the Red Flat Museum

Getting There

The gift shop and ticket kiosk are conveniently located downtown—in general Drew and I had no problems walking around the main parts of Sofia, and the Red Flat Museum is in a central location.

Tickets are more expensive than the average Bulgarian museum (18 BGN), but it’s a good price for an unusual immersive experience.

After getting the tickets guests walk to the next block and into an apartment complex, up the stairs where we entered an apartment and were given a headset with audio player.

The Museum

The Red Flat Museum is designed to be interactive. The audio guide discusses details in each room of the apartment, and guests are free to open, touch, and even eat anything they might find.

Drew and I liked thumbing through the old books, photo albums and newspapers, sitting on the chairs, and trying on the clothes hanging in the closet of one of the rooms. I even found a box of chocolates in the kitchen that we could snack on.

The audio follows the life and times of a fictional Bulgarian family in the early 1980s, close to the end of the communist regime, which ended in 1989.

The dad worked for the state as a foreign minister, the mom was a journalist, and their son was in high school. The audio was more descriptive than ideological, stating how the family lived and presenting information in a factual way.

This is a really difficult topic that many people in Bulgaria (and around the world) feel passionately about one way or the other, and Drew and I were impressed that the guide was so politically neutral. We felt like we came away with a useful sense of what life was like in Sofia under communism.

Conclusion

The audio guide is about an hour long, and that’s plenty of time to go through everything in the fairly small one-bedroom apartment.

While we found the guide to be interesting, it was a little slow-paced, and we noticed a couple guests leaving after about 15 minutes because they were bored. We don’t think the intelligent and curious readers of Snackeroo will have this problem though.

This was one of our favorite and most memorable activities in Sofia, so we definitely recommend stopping by. Five snacks!