Sofia City Art Gallery – Two for the price of zero

I believe this place is often overlooked by travelers and locals alike. It’s a shame for a place with quite an intriguing past and quite an interesting present. Before the WWII this used to be the city casino (check out how it used to look like at the Stara Sofia blog).

Don’t get me wrong. It was not a gambler’s paradise but more like the most famous place for meetings and social networking. The biggest halls in town hosted balls, political meetings, concerts, even paintings exhibitions. The casino was heavily damaged after the war and converted into gallery soon after.

Nowadays it’s big halls host exhibitions once again. The gallery has a huge collection – 3500 paintings, 800 sculptures, 2800 other drawings – but most of it is in storage. Usually there are at least two exhibitions in the gallery. They organize around 30 exhibitions per year. Entrance is completely free. And it’s located in the park (check out the City Garden article) so it’s the perfect part to a nice day outside.

These are the current exhibition(s) to see inside:

The Other Eye Project: Gorgons in the Storage Room, or, Apocalypse NowCurators: Ani Vaseva, Boryana Rossa, Monika Vakarelova

30 April 2013 – 2 June 2013