ORTA MEZAR BATH HOUSE

The old Jewish Bath House is across Sixth September Boulevard, on Tsar Kaloyan Square. Erected in the 15th-16th centuries, the Orta Mezar bath house was initially used by Turks. Jews started attending it as they settled in that area of town. The building was slated for demolition as early as the 1920s but that never came to be. Elderly Jews in Plovdiv can still remember going there with their families to take a bath. The Orta Mezar bath house survived even the massive construction effort of the 1980s. Following the collapse of Communism in 1989, the local city council, whose property the building was, started renting it out to shops and businesses. Lastly, the former bath house was a furniture shop – until a fire gutted it, in 2016. Since then the charming Ottoman building has laid in ruins.