Ivan Vazov National Theatre

Worth a detour

The neoclassical front with Apollo and the muses across the pediment is the photograph everyone takes in Sofia, and the garden and fountain in front of it are where the city sits on a warm evening. After dark, with the façade lit, is the better hour. Getting inside is harder than it looks — see the caveat below.

Story

Background

The company came first. In 1904 the education minister Ivan Shishmanov turned a private troupe called A Tear and Laughter into a state theatre, and a building was commissioned from the Viennese partnership of Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, who had put up theatres across half of central Europe. It was finished in 1906 and opened on 3 January 1907, with 848 seats and ceiling and wall paintings by the Viennese artist Rudolf Fuchs.

It has been destroyed twice. A fire during a performance in early 1923 took the stage, part of the auditorium and the cloakroom; the German architect Martin Dülfer rebuilt it, and it reopened in 1929 with modern stage machinery and 1,236 seats. An air raid on 10 January 1944 tore out part of the auditorium and the south wing, and the company spent years elsewhere before a 1949 reconstruction.

The last major rebuild, by the Bulgarian architect Ivan Tomov between 1972 and 1976, put the 1907 exterior back while quietly inserting an earthquake-resistant concrete frame, a chamber hall and an underground scene dock. Today it runs three stages: the main house of 780 seats, a chamber hall of 120, and a fourth-floor space of 90. The name honours Ivan Vazov, the writer who did more than anyone to give the new country a literature.