The Ottoman rule in Bulgaria brought a visible change in the way of organizing urban spaces expressed by i.a. architectural elements and public facilities making up new infrastructure which provided for the needs of Muslim culture. A vital element of this infrastructure is objects related to religious worship which the author of the text considers palimpsest-places. In a diachronic view, one can observe for example practice of transforming sacred buildings - churches into mosques and, after regaining independence, mosques into churches, as a result of transitioning of the same territories between Islamic and Eastern Christian cultural spheres. Other Bulgarian locations related to the Islamic culture became multilayer spaces utilized by representatives of various cultural and religious universes at the same time. The author’s considerations of the problematic status of these places are illustrated by the cases of Dzhumaya Mosque in Plovdiv and the Tomb of Bali Efendi in Sofia. The study of the meanings inscribed into city iconospheres by the discussed objects shows a huge role of the visual sphere in the creation of appropriated, regained or shared spaces. Therefore the purpose of this article is to consider the status of the post-Ottoman cultural objects in modern Bulgaria and their position on the mental maps of Bulgarian cities. It allows us to compare often extreme social reactions to their presence in the public space which exposes the multilayered ontology of these buildings. The inclusion of the issue of the collective memory of traumatic past into the analysis justifies regarding the discussed locations as transmitters of contentious memories which provoke a discussion on tolerance, nationalism and creation of historical narrative.