Park Vrana

On weekends, the grounds of the erstwhile Royal Palace in Vrana, located along Tsarigradsko Shosse in the direction of Plovdiv, are available to the public. While not very inspirational, the gardens do offer a refuge of peace and quiet away from the city traffic, and the admission cost of 5 leva is not exactly inexpensive by local standards, thus there are few visitors. Try to time your visit to coincide with a free guided tour, which departs every hour on the hour. The tour guide will point out the most noteworthy flora (primarily trees) and give you a story or two about life at the palace. We were taken aback when we learned that two elephants had been kept here for agricultural labour.
After Tsar Ferdinand purchased the site in 1889, German and Austrian landscape architects were employed to design the palace grounds, which continued to flourish for the following 40 years until it was reclaimed by the state.

After Tsar Simeon was banished in 1945, the palace was taken over by the state and restored to him a few years ago. Simeon Saxe Coburg Gotha returned the grounds to the town on the condition that they be made public. He and his family continue to live in the royal building.

It seems to be maintained by the same corporation that looks after all of Sofia’s parks, yet it has several unusual and exotic tree varieties. It’s also worth visiting to see the palace and its unusual architecture.

To reach there from Sofia, take Tsarigradsko Shosse and turn right at the intersection with the ringroad, following the brown signs. Parking costs one levy. If you’re using public transportation, you may get off the number 505 bus (from Orlov Most) near the entrance.

Vrana Palace

Vrana Palace is situated on the outskirts of Sofia, along the Sofia-Istanbul international highway, and its park is around 100 hectares.

Following Bulgaria’s freedom in 1878, Bone Petrov, a wealthy local, acquired Chardakliya, a long-standing Turkish farmhouse. He auctioned off the estate, and it was sold to Georgi Stranski, who had it for three weeks. Prince Ferdinand I acquired the Chardakliya farmhouse and associated pieces of land in January 1899.

In 1906, architect Georgi Filov developed a contemporary two-story home for the royal estate. The architectural design blends an outstanding rendition of the Plovdiv baroque with Viennese ornamental features, and it is regarded as one of Bulgarian architecture’s early twentieth-century masterpieces. The construction of the home structure was coordinated with land development for agricultural purposes and large-scale construction activity. Greenhouses and a small zoo were constructed.

The Prince’s desire to build a model residence sparked the park’s development in 1900, with the planting and afforestation of beautiful species. The landscape was expanded with the addition of a new lake and various rock gardens. The effort included Bulgarian and international landscape architects, but there was no overall park landscape design.

The royal residence, designed by architect Nikola Lazarov, was built between 1912 and 1914. Its architecture is a fusion of Byzantine and 19th-century Bulgarian renaissance elements, as well as art nouveau and French classicism. This refined architectural language is subject to a regularly produced baroque composition, which is projected to the park surrounds with ponds and floral ornamental arrangements.

The farmhouse was officially christened Vrana palace in 1912. Anton Kraus, a landscape architect, was commissioned to plan and develop the park. He expertly structured the composition in accordance with the traditional methods of landscape design in the nineteenth century. His paintings show an ambition to establish a type of botanical park, and he was helped in this by Alaricus Delmard, Johann Kelerer, and, most notably, King Ferdinand I, the natural scientist.

Vrana’s three-dimensional and volumetric composition as a floral landscape design was accomplished in broad shape by 1920.

In the years afterwards, some of the park’s parts have been improved, and new details have been added to its distinctive silhouette and color scheme environment, which gives beautiful vistas in perspective, as planned by Wilhelm Schaht.

In its creative union, the Vrana park and castle constitute a masterwork of Bulgarian landscape architecture and gardening art.

History of Park Crow “Vrana”

The park “Crow” was influenced by European landscape parks.

The park’s designers worked for more than 40 years to create a spectacular park ensemble. Use attractive plants as a “building material” for this purpose.

The diversity of 821 tree, shrub, and herbaceous species from 118 families and 435 genera in a region smaller than 100 hectares is impressive.

All of this contributes to its outstanding aesthetic worth as one of Bulgaria’s earliest works of park art.

The Park “Crow” is an important piece of landscape park art constructed in Bulgaria during the first part of the twentieth century. Its aesthetic features do not allow it to be compared to the great landscape parks constructed in Europe in the nineteenth century. It was built on a portion of a 140-acre estate owned by Bulgarian monarchs Ferdinand I and Boris III.

Simeon Koburgotsky, Tsar Boris III’s son, bequeathed the palace to the Sofia City Municipality in 2001. It is 6.8 miles from the capital’s core.

The development of the Park “Crow” began in 1900, 22 years after Bulgaria was liberated from a Turkish igo. It was created in an atmosphere when fatherland garden-park art was in its early stages of development.

At the start of their growth, the nascent Bulgarian state’s political, economic, and cultural life were situated. The park’s development not only spans a long length of time (43 years), but it is also fraught with obstacles in the early stages (1900–1909).

This is explained by a scarcity of planting material as a result of a lack of greenhouses and nurseries for the production of flowers and wood-shrub plants. A vast number of flower seedlings and seeds were given to the park from all continents. As a result, the Park “Crow” boasts a broad array of plant species.

During Turkish times, the region where the Park “Crow” started to be developed was a naked plain that had been deforested. Only the neighboring Iskar River has brought the surrounding drab terrain to life to some degree.

The Park “Crow” was designed as an extra-urban summer retreat for the royal family. This scenario has partially dictated its intimate-landscape character: it has given shape to the trees and tree groups, flower meadows, rockeries, lakes, lanes, and walkways that have adopted shapes similar to those seen in the majority of European landscape parks in the past.