Vrana Palace
Encyclopedia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
, the capital of Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
. It is today the official residence of the deposed Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
Simeon II of Bulgaria and his wife Tsaritsa Margarita. While the Royal palace in the centre of Sofia (today the National Art Gallery
National Art Gallery (Bulgaria)
The National Art Gallery is Bulgaria's national gallery and houses over 50,000 pieces of Bulgarian art. It is located on Battenberg Square in the capital city of Sofia, occupying most of the historic and imposing edifice of the former royal palace of Bulgaria, having been established in 1934 and...
and National Ethnographic Museum) served representative purposes and the Euxinograd
Euxinograd
Euxinograd is a former late 19th-century Bulgarian royal summer palace and park on the Black Sea coast, north of downtown Varna. It is currently a governmental and presidential retreat hosting cabinet meetings in the summer and offering access for tourists to several villas and hotels...
palace near Varna
Varna
Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...
was a summer residence, Vrana was the palace where the royal family of Bulgaria
Royal House of Bulgaria
The current Bulgarian royal family is a line of the Kohary branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha which ruled Bulgaria from 1887 to 1946. The last tsar, Simeon II, became Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 2001 and remained in office until 2005...
spent most of their time.
The extensive lot was bought by Tsar Ferdinand I in 1898 and is situated just outside Sofia. There is a large park and two buildings, the first one built in 1904 as a two-storey hunting lodge commissioned to Georgi Fingov
Georgi Fingov
Georgi Dimitrov Fingov was a Bulgarian architect who was particularly influenced by French Art Nouveau and is regarded as the first prominent representative of the Bulgarian Secession in architecture...
, and the second constructed mainly between 1909 and 1914 as a palace, both with money from the state budget. The earliest building in the complex, the hunting lodge, has been described architecturally as an "exquisite interpretation of the Plovdiv
Plovdiv
Plovdiv is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia with a population of 338,153 inhabitants according to Census 2011. Plovdiv's history spans some 6,000 years, with traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC; it is one of the oldest cities in Europe...
baroque
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
with Viennese
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
decorative elements".
Three rooms of the three-storey palace commissioned to the noted architect Nikola Lazarov
Nikola Lazarov
Nikola Ivanov Lazarov was a Bulgarian architect.Lazarov was born in the sub-Balkan town of Karlovo, then part of the Ottoman Empire . His father, a rose oil and woolen braid dealer and manufacturer, was killed by the Ottomans during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 which led to the Liberation...
were later furnished in the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
style, one in the style of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n royal palaces and one in a Bulgarian national style, while the study was designed in a Venetian
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
style. The palace features a carved wooden
Wood carving
Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object...
ceiling, oak wainscoting, built-in metal plates and Delftware
Delftware
Delftware, or Delft pottery, denotes blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands and the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the 16th century....
. The interior columns are made of Carrara
Carrara
Carrara is a city and comune in the province of Massa-Carrara , notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence....
marble and an old Schindler
Schindler Group
thumb|200px|Schindler Test Tower in Ebikon, Lucerne, SwitzerlandSchindler was founded in Switzerland in 1874 and is the largest manufacturer of escalators and the second largest manufacturer of elevators world wide. Schindler produces, installs, maintains and modernizes elevators and escalators in...
lift is still in use. In terms of architecture, the Vrana Palace combines Byzantine
Byzantine architecture
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to...
influences, Bulgarian National Revival
Bulgarian National Revival
The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...
traditions, Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
and French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
.
The Karelia
Karelia
Karelia , the land of the Karelian peoples, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden...
n Hall is a gift from Alexander III of Russia
Alexander III of Russia
Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...
, and all of its furniture (the table, the chairs and the dressing table) are made of Karelian birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
by master woodworkers specially sent from Russia. The first storey also has a cinema hall and tea halls, the second storey is where the apartments are located, and the third one used to be allocated to the servants and the court.
In 1918 Vrana passed from Tsar Ferdinand to Boris III. Here he faced the new government after the military coup on 9 June 1923. In August 1943, it became the property of Simeon II. The main palace was bombed by the RAF in 1943-44 during the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and after partially damaged, it was subsequently restored in 1947. After the abolition of the monarchy, Vrana was taken by the communists
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...
and became a residence of Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
.
After the fall of the communist regime, Vrana was returned to the last tsar, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his sister Princess Maria Luisa, by the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria
Constitutional Court of Bulgaria
The Constitutional Court of Bulgaria is in charge of reviewing the constitutionality of laws and statutes brought before it, as well as the compliance of these laws with international treaties that the Government has signed. The 12 members of the Constitutional Court serve a nine-year term....
in June 1998, and the park was donated by the royal family to the city of Sofia in October 1999, making it possible for the former royal park, arranged in 1903 by Ferdinand, to be opened to the public. Simeon moved with his wife Margarita into the renovated old hunting lodge in spring 2001. , the 0.968-square-kilometre park is expected to be opened to the public as soon as funds are found to finance its preparation for public use (construction of a car park, toilets and stalls, hiring of guides, etc.). The park is home to over 400 plant species and has been declared a national monument of landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
. Among the landscape art
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
ists who have worked on the Vrana Park include V. Georgiev, K. Baykushev, Jules Locheau, Johann Kellerer, Anton Kraus, Alaricus Delmard and Wilhelm Schacht. The park includes a lake and several rock garden
Rock Garden
The Rock Garden or Rock Garden of Chandigarh is a Sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India, also known as Nek Chand's Rock Garden after its founder Nek Chand, a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. Today it is spread over an area of forty-acres , it is...
s.
The palace, along with the other properties given back to Simeon II, has been the subject of much controversy in the Bulgarian media and society in the 2000s, as many argue they are in fact supposed to be public property.