ROYAL PALACE AT SOFIA
The city covers a considerable area, and looks as if a building boom had been suddenly checked, which is true. Prince Alexander was a great promoter. Under his administration Bulgaria made extraordinary progress, and Sofia started upon a promising career. Stambouloff took up the work where Alexander left it at his abdication, and carried out many of his schemes, but since the “Bulgarian Bismarck” was relieved as prime minister, little has been done in the way of public or private improvement. The stagnation is said to be due in a measure to a lack of confidence in the stability of the present government, and to the fact that Prince Ferdinand is interested in other things. One must infer that he takes little pride in the appearance of his capital and does not encourage the expenditure of money upon public works.
Shortly before he retired, Stambouloff purchased an entire block of ground opposite the palace, upon which he intended to erect a magnificent building for the offices of the government. The plans were drawn by an Austrian architect, excavations were made for the foundation and cellars, and a large quantity of cut stone was delivered by the contractors. A few days after Stambouloff’s retirement work was suspended and has never been resumed. Several train loads of granite lie scattered over the ground; the cellar is half-filled with water during the wet season and overgrown with weeds during the dry months. Every stranger who comes to Sofia instinctively asks an explanation, but Prince Ferdinand, who always has this reproachful panorama before him, seems to be entirely indifferent to it. The palace is a fine building in French style, surrounded by pleasant grounds, and facing a public park that is well laid out with foliage plants and fountains, and is a pleasure ground for the people.
The old city, or the Turkish quarter, as it is called, resembles a patch of Constantinople, and has the low adobe walls, the heavy tiled roofs, the deep windows and the narrow streets of all oriental cities, with long blocks of bazaars kept by Turks and Jews, who have most of their wares displayed upon the sidewalks. This is by far the most interesting section of the town to strangers. The shops are open, so that the visitor is enabled to watch the artisans at their work. The trades seem to be grouped together—the shoemakers in one bunch, the tailors in another, the butchers, bakers, brassworkers, tinsmiths and other people in the same trade occupying adjoining houses.
Most of the natives wear unshorn sheepskin clothing, with the wool next to the body, the leather side being tanned to a soft white, velvety appearance like buckskin; and the most interesting occupation is that of the tailors, who make all sorts of queer-looking garments from sheepskins. Many of the men wear short jackets of the Eton pattern, but as the weather grows colder they change them for warmer garments, and some have long ulsters with wide skirts which reach to their heels. The rest of their clothing is the natural color of the wool woven into heavy fabrics; their headgear is made of lamb’s wool curled like the skating caps sometimes worn in the United States. They are called kalpaks.
In the new part of the city the streets are wide, and in the business portion are lined with fine buildings of stuccoed brick, ornamented with elaborate moldings similar to those of Germany and Austria. The residence portion is only partially built up, there being wide gaps between the houses, showing the town lots that have been held for speculative purposes and where building schemes have been abandoned. If Sofia were as closely built as the ordinary European city it could accommodate three times its present population. Occasionally a stately residence rises from behind a forbidding wall. The foliage around it indicates a garden, but Bulgarian civilization has not passed the period when it is prudent to omit any means of protection. The streets and sidewalks are in a horrible condition. In the business portion of the city the roadways are paved with cobblestones and the sidewalks are well laid with flags, tiles and bricks. Each householder in the residence portion is expected to lay the sidewalk in front of his premises, but many of them neglect to do so.
BUSINESS STREET IN SOFIA
Several imposing buildings were erected for government purposes during the reign of Prince Alexander, usually of French architecture, and among other things a Protestant church (he was a Lutheran), which Ferdinand has converted into a riding-school. The military barracks, schoolhouses, the public printing office, a technical school and other public buildings are creditable, but lose much of their dignity by being scattered over the city, with unsightly spaces of open ground and half-finished buildings that have been abandoned between them. Several former Turkish mosques have been converted to secular uses and are now occupied as prisons, markets, warehouses and arsenals. The largest mosque, in the center of the city, and only a stone’s throw from the palace, was recently fitted up for a national museum.