We built this city: the 90-year-olds who made a metropolis

In 1947, 50,000 volunteers helped create Dimitrovgrad, a new city that symbolised the brave new world of communist Bulgaria. Many still live there

In her flat overlooking the main square of Dimitrovgrad, 90-year-old Maria Oteva casts her mind back more than seven decades to the foundation of the town in the early years of Bulgaria's communist era.

"Back then, 50,000 volunteers built this city because they believed in something," she says. "Nowadays, you wouldn't find 50 people to come and clean up the dirty streets."