Bulgaria Hall

Stancho Belkovski and Ivan Danchov won the competition for the Bulgaria complex in 1931, and the hall they built — begun in 1935, opened on 9 October 1937 — was the first room in the country designed from the first drawing for orchestral sound. Its panelling was worked out with the acoustics institute of the Berlin technical school; it seated some 1,470 people, took a hundred players and two hundred choristers on its platform, and housed a four-manual Sauer organ of six thousand pipes. The organ and the pianos were lost in the bombing of 1944, and the hall was rebuilt in 1949. It has been home to the Sofia Philharmonic ever since, and the chamber hall and Studio Muzika below it carry the recital and recording life of the complex. Bulgarian musicians still measure a room against its acoustics.