National Gallery "Square 500" - Sofia Municipality

Overview

Square 500 - the newest and largest building of the National Gallery, was opened on May 25, 2015. In 28 halls on four levels are exhibited 1700 works by Bulgarian and foreign artists from the rich fund of the gallery, which numbers over 42,000 museum units . The beginning of the Bulgarian collection dates back to the 1890s. Most of the foreign collection was formed in the 1980s. The exhibition includes works representing Bulgarian art from the mid-nineteenth century and twentieth century, European art from the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, samples from Asia, Africa and America. The proposal of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria Petko Karavelov for the establishment of a State Printing House was voted by the National Assembly on May 31, 1880. The project in neoclassical style of the Viennese architect Friedrich Schwanberg was realized in the period 1881-1883. In the spring of 1944, during the aerial bombardment over Sofia, the building on St. Alexander Nevsky ”was partially destroyed. Simultaneously with its restoration at the end of the 1940s, a new building was built on Vasil Levski Blvd., which houses the Technical University. In the early 1980s, the old State Printing House was rebuilt by arch. Nikola Nikolov for the newly established National Gallery of Foreign Art. The idea for an architectural complex with museum functions, including the two buildings, has been developing since 1999. The public design competition in 2010 was won by arch. Yanko Apostolov. The reconstruction of the project was carried out in 2012-2014.