Borisova Gradina

Worth a detour

Three hundred hectares that start at Eagles' Bridge and climb south-east away from the traffic. Inside it are the Ariana lake, two football stadiums, an astronomical observatory from 1897, the television tower and a large communist memorial. It is not a set piece and not really for visitors — it is simply where Sofia goes in the evening, which is the reason to walk through it.

Story

Background

The city's mayor brought a Swiss gardener, Daniel Neff, up from Bucharest in 1882 to make Sofia a garden. Neff drew the first plan that spring, set up a nursery, built himself a house on the site and began planting in 1884 — acacia, mulberry, elm. Joseph Frei took over in 1906 and pushed it towards flowers, laying out a rose garden. Georgi Duhtev inherited it in 1934, added fourteen hundred more roses and a Japanese corner. What is unusual is that none of the three tore up what came before; each worked inside the previous plan.

The park is named for Tsar Boris III. Later additions did not show the same restraint: the Vasil Levski national stadium went in during the 1950s and the Bulgarian Army stadium in the 1960s, the television tower in 1959, and the Mound of Brotherhood — a monument to communist partisans — sits on a rise in the middle of it.

The Ariana lake at the Eagles' Bridge end has pedalos in summer and becomes an ice rink in winter. Beyond it the paths get quieter quickly. It is large enough that on a weekday afternoon you can lose the city entirely about ten minutes in from one of the busiest junctions in the country.