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August 12, 1888: Central Railway Station is Inaugurated in Sofia

bta.bg · 5h · first reportShare

On August 12, 1888 (August 1 old style), the first first building of the Sofia Central Railway Station was inaugurated, The building was designed by architects Václav (Antonin) Kolář and Theodor (Bohdan) Prošek. Engineer Todor Markov designed the tracks. The building was extended in 1891 to service the northern and southwestern lines. The station was heightened by a second floor in 1913–1914 and thus became the largest train terminal in the Balkan Peninsula at that time. 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