National Art Gallery of Bulgaria

Worth a detour

Two histories in one building. The site held the Ottoman governor's konak, where Vasil Levski was kept and where the court that sentenced him to death sat in the winter of 1872–73; from 1880 it was rebuilt as the residence of Bulgaria's first prince. Come for the rooms as much as the art, and know that this wing hangs temporary shows only.

Story

Background

A konak had stood here since the sixteenth century, burned in 1816 and was replaced; it was the administrative centre of Ottoman Sofia and the place where Levski's trial ended. After the Liberation, Prince Alexander of Battenberg had the Viennese architect Viktor Rumpelmayer turn what remained into a palace, keeping the old stone foundations and part of the main façade. It opened on 26 December 1882. Ferdinand added a north-east wing between 1894 and 1896, designed by Friedrich Grünanger — the same architect who a decade later built the synagogue four hundred metres away.

After 1944 the palace housed the Council of Ministers. In 1953 the state handed it to the National Gallery and the Ethnographic Museum, which still divide it between them.

The thing to understand before you buy a ticket is that the National Gallery is now one institution across several buildings. This one, called simply The Palace, runs temporary exhibitions of Bulgarian and foreign art. The permanent collection — around seventeen hundred works over four floors, Bulgarian painting from the mid-nineteenth century on, plus European, Asian and African holdings — is at Kvadrat 500, a short walk east. The Museum of Christian Art in the Alexander Nevsky crypt belongs to the same family. Combined tickets exist; on Thursdays everything drops to about two euros.