Emfiedzhieva house

Overview

The Emfiedzhieva House Museum is a house with a museum ethnographic collection of the Regional History Museum in Kyustendil, discovered in the home of the Kyustendil craftsman Hristo Lazov Kazandzhiyata. It is a cultural monument of local significance. The house was built in 1874. It belonged to Hristo Lazov Kazandzhiyata, the first master of the Kyustendil guild and a prominent guardian of the Bulgarian church community in the city. It is located at the foot of Hisarlaka Forest Park, in the center of the old Kyustendil neighborhood "Lozenets" (Baglak), which was inhabited mainly by wealthy Bulgarians - craftsmen and merchants. The museum exposition "Urban Life and Culture of the Population in Kyustendil from the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Century" is housed in the Emfiedzhieva House, an architectural monument from the Renaissance era. The house also has its historical significance for the city. In 2 of the rooms where the headquarters of the IV Ulan Kharkiv Regiment, which liberated the city from the Ottomans on January 17, 1878, was housed, the exposition recreates the working atmosphere of its commanders. The architectural ensemble of the Emfiedzhieva house has a U-shaped plan, in 2 parts - residential and commercial, to which there are respective courtyards surrounded by massive stone walls. The building is 1-storey with half-dug cellars. The residential tract is a symmetrical Revival house of Plovdiv type. The exposition in the house-museum shows an ordinance of the town house of the wealthier part of the intelligentsia in the city: a large representative hall with Revival furniture for welcoming guests, a bedroom, a kitchen with a dining room and a small hall for afternoon visits. In the two rooms (northeast and southeast), which housed the headquarters of the Russian detachment, headed by Major General Meiendorf, Colonel Ertel, Lieutenant Colonel Zadernovsky, the furniture has been imported since the 1930s. During his stay in Kyustendil, Colonel Viktor Ivanovich Ertel lived in the northeast room of the house, known as "Ertel's office". In the living room there is a fireplace type "jamal", which also heated the small guest lounge. On the hearth in the kitchen are exhibited authentic dishes made by Hristo Kazandzhiyata - a boiler, a water jug, a coffee pot and a mortar with a hammer. The house has been restored according to a project by arch. V. Slokoski.