The national legislation defines the parameters for the preservation and protection of cultural heritage in Bulgaria, including cultural values with the category ‘of local importance’. Since 2018, local authorities have had the responsibility to implement policy in this sector, which proves to be challenging for small municipalities in financial and expert terms. Today, the composition of the cultural monuments declared in the 1960s and 1970s is not well-known to municipal administrations; in many cases, local communities do not recognise them as ‘their’ heritage. Taking the case of the municipality of Balchik, the paper discusses how many of these monuments or immovable cultural values of local importance are now forgotten and/or ‘do not exist’, or are objects of interest for the purpose of developing cultural tourism.