site.btaSofia Mayor Halts Construction in Boyana Marsh Area

Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev issued an order on Wednesday for the immediate suspension of construction activities in the Boyana Marsh area. He announced this here on Thursday at a press conference ahead of the Sofia City Council meeting about reports of unauthorized construction activities. 

Earlier, the Save Sofia group and Alexander Kolev, a lawyer from the Boyana Marsh Protection group, called on Mayor Terziev to issue an immediate order to stop the illegal and dangerous construction taking place in Sofia's Boyana neighbourhood and to protect the marsh.  

On Wednesday, Terziev said that the order issued that day included an additional on-site inspection by municipal services. The inspection found that no construction documents had been presented for some of the excavations that had been carried out. The perpetrators were given until noon on Thursday to present the necessary documentation. If they failed to do so, they will be penalized, he said.

"If this does not happen, the construction will be declared illegal," the Mayor said. He stressed that Sofia Municipality will continue to take all necessary measures to stop activities that threaten the Boyana Marsh. 

The Mayor's order of January 28 requires the construction site to be cleared within three days, after which the power and water supplies to the site will be cut off. The investor has been given 20 days to submit the required documents, including statements from the relevant Regional Inspectorate for the Environment and Water, a hydrological study and hydraulic calculations. 

Defenders of the marsh hope to have the area converted into a park. "This is only the first step towards protecting the Boyana Marsh from encroachment and building development, but we are confident that the efforts will result in its designation as a protected area and park accessible to the general public," Save the Boyana Marsh wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

The Boyana Marsh is the only remaining wetland area on the territory of the Bulgarian capital. The marsh was designated as land opened for building development in Sofia's Masterplan until August 2023, when an Environment Ministry order recognized it as a water body. The whole 1-hectare marsh is privately owned, and the owners have long been trying to drain the marsh and prepare the land for construction. They insist that it is no marsh but just a swamp that collects rainwater and wastewater from the houses in the area. According to architect Zhorzheta Rafailova of Sofiaplan, the marsh has always been there, in Boyana's Gardova Glava locality, and has been studied since the 1930s. The first petition to save the Boyana Marsh, which is Sofia's last natural habitat for birds, was submitted to Sofia Municipality on November 11, 2022. The petition was initiated by lawyer Vesselin Tonchev and Sofia University lecturer Leonid Todorov. In October 2025, the Boyana Marsh Protection Association organized a protest outside the Sofia Municipality building.

According to a research paper by Sofiaplan, ensuring the long-term existence of the marsh and keeping its ecological functions requires its designation as a protected area (as defined by the Protected Areas Act), which would include both the marsh itself and the adjoining undeveloped shore within a buffer of at least 100 metres. Any other measures, such as converting the area into an urban park or permitting partial building development, can only slow down the ecosystem's degradation but would be pointless in the long term.