A townhouse on Shipka Street built for the scholar Ivan Georgov and credited to Adolf Václav Kolář, the Czech architect who planned much of early Sofia. It was declared a cultural monument in 1978; in the early 2000s everything but the street front was replaced by a new hotel.
At a glance
Shipka Street runs through the quarter east of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, one of the areas where Sofia grew as a capital after 1878. The house at number 14, on the corner of Krakra Street, belonged to Professor Ivan Georgov, a scholar from Veles in Macedonia. It was declared a cultural monument of local importance in 1978. The Sofia register of monuments attributes it to Adolf Václav Kolář and records that it was replaced by the Crystal Palace hotel in 2002; Bulgarian Wikipedia states that the house was demolished and only the facade kept. What stands today is that facade, restored, in front of a new building with a glass upper structure.
Key facts
- Where: Shipka Street 14, corner of Krakra Street, Sofia
- Built for: Professor Ivan Georgov
- Architect: Adolf Václav Kolář, according to the Sofia register of monuments and Bulgarian Wikipedia
- Date: not found in the sources we read; Kolář’s documented Sofia works date from 1879 to the 1890s
- Protection: cultural monument of local importance, State Gazette no. 40 of 1978 (entry no. 269)
- Today: the historic facade fronts a new building of 2002, the Crystal Palace hotel
- Coordinates: 42.693724, 23.337422 · open in Google Maps
History
When Sofia became the capital of the new Bulgarian principality in 1879, it had to be rebuilt almost from scratch, and much of that work fell to foreign architects. Adolf Václav Kolář, a Czech, became the city’s first chief architect. The Sofia register of monuments lists the works attributed to him: the City Garden (1879), the Grand Hotel Bulgaria (1880–85), the Ministry of War (1885) and the Military School (1888–94). Among them is a private house at the corner of Shipka and Krakra streets, built for Ivan Georgov.
Ivan Georgov was the youngest of three brothers from Veles; the Stara Sofia local-history blog notes that, unlike his brother Georgi, a wealthy merchant with a well-known house on Dondukov Boulevard, Ivan was an academic. In 1978 the house on Shipka Street was entered in the State Gazette as a cultural monument of local importance.
In the early 2000s the site was redeveloped. The register records that the house was replaced by the Crystal Palace hotel in 2002; Bulgarian Wikipedia says that it was demolished and only the facade preserved, and the Stara Sofia blog speaks of the hotel standing in its “imitation”. The protected street front is therefore what survives of Kolář’s house.
What you see
The photograph shows the corner of the two streets. The facade is painted ochre, with the architectural details picked out in cream: pilaster strips at the corners and between the bays, a moulded cornice supported on carved brackets, and window surrounds that change from floor to floor. On the raised ground floor the windows have triangular pediments carried on small consoles, with pilaster-like side pieces and flower boxes on the sills; on the upper floor the frames are plainer, under straight hoods. A low cream plinth runs round the base.
The corner itself is cut at an angle, and the entrance of the hotel is set on the Krakra side beneath an iron canopy. Directly above and behind the old cornice rises the new building, clad in blue-tinted glass, so that the nineteenth-century front reads as a screen in front of it. The street sign for Krakra Street is fixed to the corner.
Practical information
- The building is a working hotel; the listed facade can be seen from the street at any time.
- The best view is from the opposite corner of Shipka and Krakra, where the contrast between the old front and the glass volume is clearest.
- Shipka Street has other listed houses of the same period; the walk towards the Doctors’ Garden takes a few minutes.
Getting there
The house is in central Sofia, about five minutes on foot from the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The Sofia University metro station is about ten minutes’ walk away.
Nearby
- Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a few minutes to the west.
- National Art Gallery, in the former royal palace.
- The Doctors’ Garden, the park at the end of Shipka Street with its monument to the doctors who died in the war of 1877–78.
Sources
- Register of Sofia monuments, author page: Adolf Václav Kolář: list of his works, including the Georgov house at Shipka and Krakra, replaced by the Crystal Palace hotel in 2002.
- Wikipedia (bg), Георгова къща (Иван Георгов): State Gazette 40/1978, no. 269; Kolář; the facade kept.
- Stara Sofia blog, “Къщата на Георгов”: the Georgov brothers and the hotel in the house’s place (a local-history blog).
- Bulgarian Hotel and Restaurant Association, Crystal Palace Boutique Hotel: address and the hotel’s description of its site as an architectural monument.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position returned as Crystal Palace, 14, Shipka, Sofia.
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