Sofia opened the building of the National Theatre on January 3, 1907. Eighty-one years later, the same date entered the history of Bulgarian medicine with the birth of the country\u2019s first IVF baby.<\/p>\n
Designed in the spirit of European theatre architecture, the building expressed the young Bulgarian state\u2019s ambition to give its capital a permanent cultural institution. Sofia already had audiences and theatrical traditions. The new building gave them a fixed address and a landmark in the city.<\/p>\n
The National Theatre was more than a fa\u00e7ade in central Sofia. The building put a stage, a company and an audience under one roof \u2014 that repeated meeting is what turns a performance venue into an institution. Its opening in 1907 gave the capital a fixed cultural address that audiences could return to.<\/p>\n
In 1988, Bulgaria\u2019s first IVF baby was born. For the medical teams, the procedure involved technology that was still new and demanding at the time. For the family, the result was direct and personal: a child who had not been possible through natural conception.<\/p>\n
In IVF, fertilisation takes place outside the body before the pregnancy continues. The birth in 1988 showed that this medical possibility had moved beyond a laboratory attempt and into Bulgarian healthcare. For the family, the result was not an abstract breakthrough. It was a child.<\/p>\n
Related reading:<\/strong> Revisit the previous day \u2014 January 2<\/a>; continue to the next day \u2014 January 4<\/a>; and browse Best in Bulgaria<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On January 3, Sofia opened the National Theatre building in 1907, and Bulgaria\u2019s first IVF baby was born in 1988.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-this-day-in-bulgaria","latest_post"],"yoast_head":"\n