site.btaFebruary 23, 1971: Ground Broken for Sofia's New Central Railway Station

Fifty-five years ago on Monday, on February 23, 1971, ground was broken for the construction of Sofia's new Central Railway Station by the then Minister of Transport Grigor Stoichkov.

The first building of the Central Station in Sofia was designed by architects Antonin Kolar, Bogdan Prosek and Todor Markov and was inaugurated on August 1, 1888. In 1891, an extension was added with a new building serving the northern and southwestern lines. In 1962, the Ministry of Transport announced an international competition for a new station building, which was won by a team led by Hans Gericke (at that time the chief architect of East Berlin, Germany). Gericke's design, however, was found to be too expensive, and a new competition was launched, and the prize went to the entry of the Transproekt Research and Design Institute (IPP Transproekt).

The old building was demolished by a series of remote-controlled explosions in 1974, the last one, on April 15, 1974, razing the western wing.

The new building consists of five sections and has three floors above ground level and two below ground level and a total of 365 rooms. The aluminium roof was made in Dusseldorf. It rests on 36 X-shaped pillars. The exterior is faced with white marble. The large waiting room has a monumental mosaic by Svetlin Roussev (1975) and a 200 sq m metal sculpture composition by Ivan Kirkov. Restaurants, cafes and ticket counters, left-luggage lockers and a post office are there, too. Downstairs, there are ticket counters for the rest of the destinations, luggage offices, a pharmacy, snack counters, and timetable boards. The station's 13 tracks and six roofed platforms are accessible through stairs, escalators and lifts from a tunnel which is connected with a large shopping mall underpass. A sculpture entitled Motherhood by Velichko Minekov (1977) rises at the centre of the open-top circular section of the mall. The mall and the square in front of the station occupy an aggregate 20,000 sq m.

The new Central Station was inaugurated on September 6, 1974 by Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, who donned a station foreman's red cap and signalled the train for Vidin to pull out. The second stage of the project was commissioned on June 1, 1975, when all services became fully operational.

The building functioned without repairs over the next 40 years. An overhaul began on April 3, 2014 on funds from Operational Programme Transport, and it was completed in early 2016.

Following is an English translation of the original news item in BTA's Home News Desk bulletin that covered the ground-breaking ceremony:

"Sofia, February 23, 1971 - Today, Transport Minister Grigor Stoichkov broke ground for the construction of the new Sofia Central Railway Station. On an area of ​13,340 square meters, one of the most beautiful and best functionally designed stations, not only in the Balkans but also in Europe, will be built of concrete and glass. The reception building will be located on the current square and garden right next to the old Central Station. There will be two lounges for passenger service - one at the level of the passenger tunnel under the tracks, and the other at the level of the square. They will house post offices, ticket counters, a currency exchange office, a cafeteria, restaurants, a cinema, and rooms for mothers with children.

Passengers will exit the platforms via escalators and stairs. The new station will have 11 through and 2 front tracks, 5 intermediate moving platforms with a length of 400 meters, and a main platform of 600 meters. The interior of the building and the tunnels and the flooring will be lined with white, green and red marble and polished Vratsa limestone. In the eastern part of the station square, as an integral part of the reception building, a 22-story building will be built for the needs of railway transport. The existing station, which was built in 1888, is not able to meet the needs of passenger transportation of the capital city. Round-the-clock train movements will increase from 786 now to 1,200 in 1980.

Passenger traffic numbered 15,000 in 1944, it has now grown to 36,000-40,000, and is expected to approximate 1,100,000 by 2000. This necessitated the construction of a new station that would meet the needs of our capital. The design was done by IPP Transproekt, with architect Milko Bechev and Engr. Svetozar Brankov as chief designers and Engr. Dimitar Konstantinov as chief designer for the track development."