bg Sofia

Yordan Dzhumaliev and Yosif Madzher Building

- Pirotska Street 1 -
The residential and commercial building was constructed back in 1881 and was built by the hand of the design of the Bulgarian architect Alexi Nachev. It was built for the Bulgarian banker Yosif Madzher and the Bulgarian entrepreneur Yordan Dzhumaliev, who was born in in 1858. Only at 16 years old, he became a teacher at a Ruse school, where he worked from 1874 to 1876. After the , he was sent to the Postal School in by of Russia. The Russian emperor took interest in him after he went on foot from Ruse to , where at night he swam across the Dunabe river to inform the Russian troops about the location of the Turkish forces.
Yordan Dzhumaliev
After his return to Bulgaria, he moved to Sofia where he started his entrepreneurship, taking advantage of the opportunities that the new capital had to offer. Together with his partner, the prominent Sofia banker Yosif Madzher, he built this building in which he housed the modern hotel called Metropol, which contains 38 rooms. Around 1910, the hotel was the fifth largest in the capital, although not the most sophisticated. Yordan Dzhumaliev received the order for the construction of an income building on the other side of the street, which was commissioned by the board of trustees of a new church dedicated to the holy brothers . The conditions, in addition to erecting the building, were that the concessionaire manages it for a while, rents it out, and hands over the proceeds to the parish board. With impressive speed, already in the same year, he completed the construction and found tenants.

In 1885, he participated in the and left a notebook in which he described the battles. In 1907, he married Tsveta Pavlovich, the daughter of the prominent physician, Doctor Dimitar Pavlovich, and niece of the great artist . Dimitar, one of their two sons, was married to Ekaterina, who was the granddaughter of . After Yordan Dzhumaliev's death in 1917, he left behind a wife and two children who were two and four years old.
View from the building that was constructed on the other side of the street
The corner building, which is built in the Neo-Classical style, is lavishly decorated with in all shapes and sizes. Some of the broken parts of the pointed pediments are filled up with a decorative vase. Underneath the pilasters, you can either admire an motif, or , which are also used underneath the roof and the cornice that separates both the first and second floor. The third floor windows are flanked by that are crowned with a Doric , while the round-shaped pilasters that flank the second floor windows are crowned with an Ionic one. The window sills of the third floor windows, as well as the two corbels that support them, are embellished with foliage. The rectangular fragments, which are placed between the windows contain cut-out corners filled with squares. The building contains a total of six balconies, all of which are secured with a wrought iron railing, which is lavishly decorated with .
The building on the right in the 1940s