site.btaForeign Minister Gabriel on Restoration of Landmark Building in Bucharest

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel discussed the restoration of a landmark building in Bucharest related to Bulgarian history at Parliament's Question Time on Friday. She said the aim is not just to guarantee the restoration of the Solakov Inn but to ensure that its future use will promote the Bulgarian cultural and historical presence in the Romanian capital.

The preservation of the Solakova Inn in Bucharest and of other sites in Romania related to Bulgarian history is a standing priority of the Foreign Ministry and of the Bulgarian Embassy in Bucharest, Gabriel said.

She said the building was restituted to four heirs, but they did not take the necessary steps to maintain it until 2019. Back in 1997, it was included in the national restoration plan by Bucharest Municipality. Now it is in need of emergency measures - the facade and its decoration are in a critical condition, Gabriel said. The Bulgarian Embassy inspected it on January 1, 2024 and found that work was not being done on the site.

In 2019, the Bucharest Municipal Council decided to alienate the building and now the municipality is the sole owner, Gabriel said. In 2020, the local government said the building was a priority. The Mayor of Bucharest said the aim was to restore and turn the building into a municipal cultural centre. No steps were taken to reinforce the walls in 2022.

Gabriel said the Bulgarian Embassy was in constant contact with the municipal authorities of Bucharest and insisted on speeding up the renovation.

The Embassy has suggested that a Bulgarian corner be set up in the Solakov Inn building once it is renovated and the municipal cultural centre opens, Gabriel said. The Mayor of Bucharest said earlier in February that conservation and restoration works would start in March.

The inn was named after the Solakoglu brothers from the Danubian city of Svishtov. Initially built as a pasta factory in 1859, it gradually became a haven for Bulgarian revolutionary immigrants in Romania. The Solakov Inn housed the press where the great Bulgarian National Revival figure Lyuben Karavelov published the newspapers Freedom and Independence. There, too, poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev and national hero Vasil Levski spent the winter of 1868.

The 100-room building was nearly destroyed in the World War II bombings and was nationalized in 1948. Until the end of the 1980s it housed low-income people and gradually fell into disrepair, to the point that it was threatened with demolition.