Palace of Justice (Sofia)
The Palace of Justice in Sofia ( Bulgarian Съдебна палата / Sadebna palata) is a monumental architectural style in the center of Sofia that houses all of the city's courts. It is located on the Boulevard "Witoscha" 2, between the cross streets "Alabin" and "Positano". The Palace of Justice is now a cultural monument.
The Palace of Justice was the first building in Sofia of this monumental style. Later, the Bulgarian National Bank (1930s) and Largo (1950s) were also built in a similar monumental style.
The original architectural design and construction plan was made by Nikola Lasarow and was later revised by the architect Pecho Kojchev. As a sign of his protest against irregularities in the construction, Pencho Kojchev declined to participate in the official opening of the Palace of Justice.
building
The only front of the Palace of Justice is a little more open, facing east to the boulevard “Witoscha”, otherwise it becomes laterally from the very small streets “Alabin” (to the south) and “Positano” (to the north) and to the rear from the “Lawele” “-Road bounded (to the west).
The building has a built-up area of 8238 m² and an enclosed space of 244,000 m³. The building has two basement floors. The lower one is below street level and houses the installation facilities for the Palace of Justice. The higher basement is at ground level. The front of the Palace of Justice is 90 m long, the sides are 140 m long. The building has eight inner courtyards.
The building has a plinth made of syenite , cladding made of white limestone and a conspicuous cornice below the top floor. Under the cornice is written “СДЕБНА ПАЛАТА” (Bulgarian for “court palace”) in large capital letters. Only building materials from Bulgaria were used for the construction.
The four-storey building also has two basement floors and extends over a rectangular floor area of 8500 m². It has 430 rooms, of which 24 are courtrooms , a library and a banking hall. The building has a usable area of 48,000 m².
The front is dominated by 12 columns that extend over three floors and has five large entrance doors that can be reached via a monumental staircase with 16 steps.
The entrance staircase, which extends over a third of the length of the front, is lined with two monumental lion statues. The lions stand on a pedestal on either side of the stairs and look slightly to the side, away from the center of the facade. The lion sculptures in front of the Palace of Justice are by Velichko Minekow (Величко Минеков). The ornaments on the facade derived from Kirili Schiwarow (Кирил Шиваров) and Ljubomir Daltschew (Любомир Далчев).
The architectural style of the building is eclectic , with various classic elements. The fourth floor is in the place of a balustrade , which is otherwise often found in Renaissance buildings. The doors, windows and consoles are decorated in Roman and Byzantine styles.
history
Until 1940, 50 years after the liberation of Bulgaria , no building had been erected to meet the needs of the Bulgarian legal system. Construction work on the Palace of Justice, which was to house all Sofia courts together, began in 1929 and was completed in 1940. Up until the opening of the Palace of Justice in 1941, the various Sofia courts were scattered in unsuitable rooms in various private buildings.
prehistory
However, the start of construction was preceded by 49 years of back and forth over the construction of a courthouse. As early as 1880 (i.e. two years after the founding of the Principality of Bulgaria and one year after the adoption of the Tarnowo Constitution ), the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice, when setting the budget for 1881, ensured that all budget surpluses were used for the construction of a palace of justice. The subject came back on the agenda in 1882, when a commission was set up to make the necessary distribution of the halls, rooms and offices for the new building to be built.
During the reign of the second government of Petko Karawelow (1884–1885), construction of the Palace of Justice in Sofia began according to plans by court architect Friedrich Grünanger , chief architect at the Department of Public Buildings at the Ministry of Finance. The first draft was planned in the Gothic style. In the budget of the Ministry of Justice for 1885, 200,000 leva were earmarked for this. The foundations for this were laid on the south side of "Ivan Wasow" Street, directly in front of the former building of the Sofia municipality and the Sofia City Art Gallery.
Due to the political events (1885 unification of the Principality of Bulgaria with Eastern Rumelia , 1885 Serbian-Bulgarian War , coup of 1886 against Alexander I and his abdication in 1886) the construction was stopped. On the instructions of the mayor of Sofia Dimitar Petkow , the foundation was filled in again and the area was attached to a small park.
The Ministry of Justice had again set up a commission to work out the project in 1896. This considered a two-story building with a floor area of 3800 m² to be necessary and estimated the construction costs at 0.95 to 1.14 million leva. The following open spaces were recommended as a possible location: near the Central Market Hall in Sofia , near the Church of the Holy "Sedmochislenizi" (Свети Седмочисленици), by the present-day Foreign Art Gallery (the former State Printing House) and by the small park in front of the Central Military Club .
In 1904, on the initiative of the Ministry of Justice, the Council of Ministers decided to develop a project for a building for the Palace of Justice in Sofia on the site where the Bulgarian National Bank building stands today.
The government of Ratscho Petrow (until November 1906) and then the government of Dimitar Petkow (from November 1906) announced the first national competition for the Palace of Justice project in 1906. 11 Bulgarian architects took part with their designs. Of these, 8 drafts were rejected because they did not meet the requirements. A first and second place was not awarded. The design "Lex-Pax" by the architect Nikola Lasarow (Никола Лазаров), which had been excluded from the competition, was bought for 700 leva because it was classified as the most suitable for a palace of justice and because it was the only one with a large main hall: the " salle des pas-perdus ”(literally: hall of lost steps), the name of which comes from the Masonic parlance , which says that every step before entering the brotherhood or every step that is not taken in accordance with their statutes is to be regarded symbolically as lost. Such a large hall was of paramount importance for a palace of justice.
In September 1906 an international competition with much more detailed specifications was announced. The specifications were based on the design by the architect Nikola Lasarow from the first (national) competition. 44 drafts were submitted by May 1907. The jury awarded first place endowed with 5000 leva to the design "Lex-Pax-Just" to an architect from Paris and second place with 3500 leva to the Parisian architects Jan Jiret and Evgeni Bertran (Bulgarian Жан Жирет and Евгений Бертран) . Third place went to the architect Nikola Lasarow with 2000 leva and fourth place was awarded to the French architect Teofil Burjo (Теофил Буржо) with 1000 leva.
The jury recommended that the winners of the second and third place be commissioned with the construction of the Palace of Justice (Jiret, Bertran and Lasarow), whereby a new joint design should be made from both designs. Because of the urgency of the construction, the decision was approved by the Ministry on June 11, 1907.
The Palace of Justice was to be planned this time on the wasteland in front of the military club, with a floor area of 9150 m². The contracts for the architects' fee, each 90,000 leva, had already been prepared in the Ministry of Justice. The municipality of the capital Sofia and some public institutions, however, spoke out against a change of the location for the palace of justice to be built. Architect Lasarow referred to the area between the streets “Witoscha”, “Alabin”, “Lawele” and “Positane” as the only suitable location (13,000 m²), which is also the current location of the Palace of Justice. At this point stood the burned down school "Denkoglu" ("Денкоглу"; named after Ivan Denkoglu ). At the location of today's Palace of Justice used to be, among other things, the well-known pastry shop "Eiffel Tower" (сладкарница "Айфелова кула" / Sladkarnitsa ).
In August 1911, the privately owned building plot (14,500 m²) was expropriated for the building of the Palace of Justice. However, new disputes followed over the location of the Palace of Justice. We were talking about land at the Church of Saints "Sedmochislenizi", at the Sofia Telegraph Office (Телефонна палата) and at the Sofia Theological Faculty (Духовна академия). The decision for the location of the Palace of Justice was subsequently changed again and the current location was determined.
At that time, private interests played a major role in determining the location of the Palace of Justice, as well as many other public buildings and facilities, because these buildings considerably increase the value of the buildings in the neighborhood. At the same time, the construction of the Palace of Justice deprived the previous landlords of the old and unsuitable buildings for the courts and lawyers for their income. All of this contributed to the decades-long delay in the start of construction on the Palace of Justice.
The Law on the Construction of the Palace of Justice was published in 1912. After that, the architect Lazarov offered to work out the general master plan (общ генерален проект) free of charge. In the spring of 1912, the Ministry of Justice announced another international competition for the Palace of Justice, as well as for the new Tsar's Palace (царски дворец) and the building of a museum with a library. Because of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the architectural competition was not concluded until April 1914.
A total of 400 designs were submitted to the international jury, including 180 for the Palace of Justice. The first prize of 6000 leva went to Lazarov. He also won first prize for the museum with library and second prize for the new tsar's palace.
The First World War postponed the construction of the Palace of Justice again. After the end of the war, the revision of the building plans from the last architectural competition was resumed.
The Ministry of Justice decided in 1922 to award the contract for the construction of the Palace of Justice. In 1923 it asked the various judicial institutions in Sofia how much space they would need in the Palace of Justice, taking into account the development for the future 30 to 50 years.
To finance the construction of the Palace of Justice, the “Courthouse” fund (фонд “Съдебни сгради”) was founded on September 27, 1926. This fund collects financial resources by collecting various fees and surcharges. Despite many doubters, these seemingly insignificant sources of income secured the building of the Palace of Justice.
The income of the fund was so ample that it was used to build a total of 62 courthouses in Bulgaria by 1944. A Ministry of Justice was also built - the current building of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in Sofia.
With this fund, an architecture firm was founded in 1928, which used the design of the previous architecture competitions, in particular Lasarov's excellent design from 1914.
After this long history, construction of the Palace of Justice began in 1929.
construction
The final planning of the Palace of Justice was entrusted to the architect Pencho Kojchev (Пенчо Койчев), who at the time was the head of the architecture department at the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Facilities. On November 29, 1928, the tenders for the reinforced concrete work on the Palace of Justice were ready. The construction took place at the place suggested by Lasarow, on an area of 12,300 m²
In some cases, there were construction delays because financial resources from the building fund had to be transferred to other state tasks. Due to some irregularities, the architect Pentscho Kojtsches was withdrawn from management and construction supervision.
It was planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment and institutionalization of the Bulgarian legal system on the occasion of the opening of the session ("judicial year") in Bulgaria in September 1941 in the newly built Palace of Justice in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. The building was completed in 1940 after 11 years of construction, but was only handed over in September 1941 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Bulgarian judicial system. The construction time of 11 years was not particularly long for a building of this size by the standards of the time.
Use of the building
The following courts moved into the Palace of Justice in 1940:
- Supreme Court of Appeal (Върховният касационен съд)
- Supreme Council of Lawyers (Висшият адвокатски съвет)
- Sofia Court of Appeal (Софийският апелативен съд)
- Sofia District Court (Софийският областен съд) with investigating judges and notaries
- Софийският адвокатски съвет
- Sofia District Court (Софийският околийски съд) with enforcement judges (съдиите-изпълнители)
- the management of the Palace of Justice
It was hit by bombs during the bombing of Sofia in 1943 and 1944, but only slightly damaged.
After the September putsch of the Bulgarian Communists on September 9, 1944 and the seizure of power by the Communists, the basement of the Palace of Justice was used as a prison by the “ People's Court ” (Bulgarian народен съд). In socialist times, the Palace of Justice housed the Ministry of Justice, among other things.
For the 1300th anniversary of the founding of Bulgaria, which was celebrated in 1984 (among other things, the building of the Palace of Culture - NDK - was completed), the then Minister of Culture Lyudmila Zhivkova (the Ministry of Culture officially carried the name "Committee for Art and Culture") through that the courts located in the Palace of Justice and the Ministry of Justice also located there had to be evacuated in order to present the first exhibition of the National Historical Museum, which was officially founded in 1973, at a representative location on 10,000 m² . As Minister of Culture and the daughter of the then communist party and state leader Todor Zhivkov, Lyudmila Zhivkova was responsible for organizing the celebrations for Bulgaria's 1300th anniversary and for founding the museum. Thanks to the support of her father, she prevailed against the Minister of Justice, so that the Ministry of Justice had to move out of the representative building of the Palace of Justice in Sofia to give way to the newly created museum.
The lions, the heraldic animal of Bulgaria and a symbol of the Bulgarian state, were only erected in front of the Palace of Justice at the time of Lyudmila Schiwkowa , when the Palace of Justice was converted into the National Historical Museum and the courts and the Ministry of Justice had to move out of the building.
Since the turn of the century, the Supreme Court of Appeal (Bulgarian Върховен касационен съд) and the General Prosecutor's Office (Главна прокуратура) have been located in the Palace of Justice. In the building there is also a branch of Sibank (formerly: Economic and Investment Bank; Bulgarian Стопанска и инвестиционна банка).
After the general renovation of the Palace of Justice from 2001 to 2007, the entrance area on the front side, which previously seemed very open and accessible (large open staircase, five large entrance doors) was secured by massive, high metal gates on the stairs, which severely impaired the overall aesthetic impression of the front side and therefore aroused great criticism. Since then, also for safety reasons, only the middle three of the five entrance doors have been opened and the large external staircase is divided into corridors by numerous (10 in total) handrails that are closely spaced, so that only one access to the entrance doors is possible, the corridors in between are also locked by chains hanging from the pillars. The narrow side stairs behind the lion base were also blocked off by massive bars. Before these barriers were installed, numerous people sat on the stairs of the Palace of Justice in the summer.
A total of 15 institutions and organizations are based in the Palace of Justice, which is open to the public (after the security check in a security gate). The larger courts and authorities are:
- Supreme Court of Appeal (Върховен касационен съд; ВКС; responsible for final decisions: "Cassation")
- Sofia Court of Appeal (Софийски апелативен съд; САС; responsible for appeals against first-instance decisions: "Appelation")
- Sofia City Court (Софийски градски съд; СГС)
- Sofia District Court (Софийски окръжен съд; СОС)
- Military Appeals Court (Военно-апелативен съд; ВАС)
- Sofia Military Court (Софийски военнен съд; СВС)
- Supreme Appeals Prosecutor's Office (Върховна касационна прокуратура; ВКП)
- Sofia City Prosecutor's Office (Софийска градска прокуратура; СГП)
- Judicial Police (Съдебна полиция)
Web links
- History of the Palace of Justice (Engl.)
- 360-degree panorama picture (for full-screen mode: click the button at the bottom right of the picture)
- old photo (the Palace of Justice still without lion statues and without the inscription "Palace of Justice")
Coordinates: 42 ° 41 ′ 44 ″ N , 23 ° 19 ′ 12 ″ E