Sofia - Museums |
The National Historical Museum The National Historical Museum in Sofia is Bulgaria's largest museum. It was founded on 5 May 1973 and its first representative exposition was opened in 1984 to commemorate 1300 years of Bulgarian history. The museum was moved to a former governmental residence in 2000 and currently stores and owns over 650,000 objects connected to archaeology, fine arts, history and ethnography, exhibiting about 10% of all. The National Historical Museum disposes of a cloakroom, a buffet, a museum library and a souvenir shop, also offering professional conservation and restoration of historical monuments, authenticity investigations and expert valuation. The National Archaeological Museum The National Archaeological Museum is an archaeological museum in the centre of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It occupies the building of the largest and oldest former Ottoman mosque in the city, Büyük camii ("Grand Mosque"), built from stone around 1474 under Mehmed II. The museum was established as a separate entity in 1893 as the National Museum directed by the Czech Václav Dobrusky with its headquarters in the former mosque that previously housed the National Library between 1880 and 1893. The museum was officially opened and inaugurated in 1905, as by then all archaeological exhibits previously kept all over the city were moved there, in the presence of Knyaz Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Minister of Enlightenment Ivan Shishmanov. Several additional halls and administrative buildings of the museum were constructed in the following years, which continues to use the historic stone building of the old mosque despite the often unfavourable conditions, notably the humidity in the summer. The museum has five exhibition halls: Central Hall, Prehistory, Middle Ages, Treasure, and a special temporary exhibition. It is managed by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The National Gallery for Foreign Art of Bulgaria The National Gallery for Foreign Art of Bulgaria is a gallery located on St Alexander Nevsky Square in the capital city of Sofia and serves as the country's national institution for foreign (i.e. non-Bulgarian) art. It is situated in the imposing 19th-century Neoclassic edifice of the former Royal Printing Office built between 1882 and 1884 during the rule of Knyaz Alexander Battenberg after a project by Austrian architect F. Schwanberg. The gallery was founded on 5 November 1985 as the art gallery of the Sts. Cyril and Methodius Foundation, its stock being collected by donations, as well as by the addition of the National Art Gallery's foreign art section. The gallery's permanent exposition features European, Asian (Buddhist, Japanese and Indian) and African art, as well as separate contemporary art and engraving sections. Among the artists featured in the collection are Italian Renaissance painter Rosso Fiorentino, Dutch and Flemish artists Jan van Goyen, Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, Isaac van Ostade, Frans Francken II, as well as Auguste Rodin, Ivan Meštrović, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall. |