The Aleksandr Nevskiy cathedral and the Yellow Brick Road, the Largo and NDK: tourists in Sofia tend to gravitate around these focal points of interest. The more adventurous explore the multiethnic bustle around the Women's Market, and everyone is into discovering Sofia's restaurants and nightlife.

This town, however, has a hidden face which reveals, in  small details, not only the changes in its architecture and its history, but the souls of its people going through periods of intellectual and economic vigour or decline, struggling with wars and crises, with dictatorship, democracy and the free market.

To find it, you don't need to explore the murkier backstreets.

Mercury head, in Jugendstil, from the facade of the former Sofia Bank building, erected in 1921, on Moskovska and Benkovski Streets. Today the building still functions as a bank

All you have to do is to look up, to the architectural details adorning Sofia's façades.

These started to appear soon after Sofia became the capital of independent Bulgaria, in 1879. In a few decades, the central parts of the city were denuded of old Ottoman buildings, redesigned and rebuilt with public and private housing, and cultural, administrative and business buildings in the latest European fashion, mainly neo-Baroque and Art Deco.

It was an era when everything looked possible for young Bulgaria. The decoration mirrored this enthusiasm and the desire to achieve the coveted "European-ness": cherubs and garlands, caryatids and the faces of allegorical figures appeared frequently, even when the houses they adorned were neither large nor imposing.

The building of the Bulgarian National Bank is an example of modernism, but it is adorned with some neo-Baroque statues which symbolise Bulgaria's fecundity and commerce

Not everyone, however, was mad about copycat and frou-frou architecture. The emerging artistic and intellectual elite wanted to have their own personality reflected in their homes – and this is why, on the porch of the architect Frangov's house, on Shipka Street, there appeared the cubist sculpture of a woman's head.

When the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars broke out, Sofia was very different compared to its former 1879 self. These wars, however, along with the Great War of 1914-1918, had a devastating effect. Enthusiasm for unification with Bulgarian territories still in the Ottoman Empire evaporated when Bulgaria  twice found itself on the losing side. Thousands died, the economy was in tatters and refugees swarmed into the hinterland. Political instability was rife.

A detail from the Builders Building, erected in 1910 as the culture centre for construction workers in Sofia, at the corner of Hristo Botev Boulevard and Pirotska Street

When, in the 1920s, people were again in the mood to build and create, both the spirit of the era and the architecture had changed. The interwar period was a time of big business and pragmatism, reflected in modernist and sometimes brutalist architecture. Out went the frivolous and ornate facades of city homes with gardens, in came the practical, unremarkable apartment blocks and tall business buildings where the rising numbers of the middle class lived and worked.

Decorations became more vigorous, too. The atlantes and caryatids of the period have more stylised features, and the strongly-built allegorical figures more than ever represented the fruits of hard work. Probably some of the best are the sculpture of St Nicolas on the corner of the Bulgarian National Bank, from 1939, and the sculptures at the roof-line of the administrative building on the corner of Dondukov Boulevard and Bacho Kiro Street.

The Memorial Home for War Disabled Veterans, at the intersection of Solunska and Hristo Belchev Streets, was built in 1936-1947

The war losses were dubbed a national catastrophe, but the glories of Bulgarian history were often a conversation topic – as reflected in decorative styles. Look up at the masculine façade of the Ministry of Defence, built between 1939 and 1945, and you'll see the determined faces of Bulgarian kings and warriors. A copy of the Madara Horseman adorns an apartment building on Gladstone Street. The inscription beneath tells that the building is named after Khan Krum, the much-feared early Bulgarian ruler from the early 9th Century. Even Vagabond's office, which is in a building from the early 1930s on Budapest Street, bears a relief of a strong soldier. He, interestingly, looks as if he has been borrowed from Fascist Italy.

The bomb raids of the Allies in 1943-1944 destroyed bits of Central Sofia and, when the dust settled, the Communists took over. A new era in life and building began.

A Roman soldier sits above the entryway to Vagabond Media's offices

Massive Stalinist buildings arose and their message – you, human ant, kneel down before Big Brother! – was imposed on ordinary people. Decorations embodied the same spirit. Five-pointed stars mingled with garlands and allegorical figures now represented the successes of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

In the 1960s and the 1970s, Stalinism was replaced with Socialist modernism. In some places, however, propagandist decoration prevailed. Gigantic mosaics and murals with historical themes or stylised representations of the (presumably) booming economy and culture of Socialist Bulgaria appeared on the walls of nondescript apartment buildings. One of the best examples is on a wall next to the 199 Theatre on Rakovski Street.

What happened to all these when the regime collapsed in 1989?

King Simeon, considered the greatest Bulgarian ruler and general, peers down from the facade of the Ministry of Defence

The chaotic times of the emerging free market, coupled with unemployment, mass emigration and organised crime, became instantly visible on Sofia's facades.

Neglected for decades and now inhabited by elderly people on small pensions, many older buildings started to crumble.

Lack of rules and of a willingness to apply regulations turned the face of Sofia into a patchwork, which blends remains from the past in different stages of neglect and self-styled modernity. The names of banks now shine from newly-repainted facades from the beginning of the 20th century, rubbing shoulders with at time surreally ghostly buildings. Plastic window frames adorn Art Deco facades. Insulation in vivid colours covers old walls, sometimes (but not always) sparing older reliefs or sculptures. Cables garland facades. Until a recent clean-up, the silhouette of the long-removed five pointed star was still visible on the Council of Ministers.

Workers and small-time merchants keep the world turning – the sculpture from the former Bankers’ Building on Rakovski Boulevard celebrates the virtues of the cooperative movement. It was created in the 1920s. The building is private property and is currently undergoing renovation to be converted into a luxury hotel owned by Robert De Niro. The roof is subject to a controversial reconstruction that is said to diminish the prominence of the sculpture

Happily, there are more gratifying additions. Sometimes the inhabitants of some apartment block repaint the façade in a more fanciful or even artistic manner and in the 2000s, poems by some of the finest European poets appeared on some walls. Wall-to-Wall. Poetry of Sofia was a project spearheaded by the Netherlands embassy which involved all EU countries. They still have an impact. If you are in the right place and you look up, you can be rewarded with a poem. 

Allegories of strength and fecundity adorn the western facade of the former Royal Palace, now National Art Gallery

In the interwar period, the squirrel was used to symbolise industry and frugality. It was therefore used as an ornament on the houses of merchants who wished to present themselves as savvy entrepreneurs. This one adorns a residential building on Hadzhi Dimitar Street

A knight protects the entrance of a residential building on Chataldzha Street

Secession-style sculptures from the facade of Musala, one of Sofia's first apartment buildings, built in 1925. It stands at the intersection of Triaditsa and Serdica Streets, behind the Council of Ministers

The statue of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, still marks the entrance to a long-defunct printing house built in 1925 on Denkoglu Street, just off Garibaldi Square

Secession-style figures from the facade of Atanas Burov’s bank, built during the interwar period on Graf Ignatiev Street

Allegories of labour and thrift from the cupola of a building that used to house an insurance association for clerical workers, on King Liberator Boulevard. The building now belongs to a commercial insurance company

Statues from the former building of the Phoenix Insurance company, which was heavily damaged during the 1943-1944 Allies raids on Sofia, on Dondukov Boulevard