bg Sofia

Nikola Ivanov House

- Krakra Street 11 -
The residential and administrative building was built around 1900 for the Bulgarian General and Minister of Defense, Nikola Ivanov, who was born on March 2, 1861, in . He studied at the Aprilov National High School in and then at the Imperial Lyceum Galatasaray in . He was one of the first graduates of the General Staff Military Academy of and fought as a volunteer during the . After the war, he stayed in for a short time before going to the Military School in Sofia in 1878 where he graduated the year after. Between May 10, 1894, and November 29, 1896, he became chief of the Headquarters of the Bulgarian Army, and after that, he became Minister of War from November 29, 1896, until January 30, 1899.

During the Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885, he worked for the chief of the Central Column of the Western Detachment and participated in the Battle of . On 2 August 1912, he was promoted to lieutenant general by Tsar of Bulgaria. During the , he was in charge of the siege and capture of , and during the in 1913, he was commander of the second Army in July 1913, and on August 7, 1913, after the cease-fire, he resigned from the army. During the , he remained in the reserve and at the same time he acted as a public figure and publicist. Infantry General Nikola Ivanov died on September 10, 1940, in Sofia, at the age of 79.
Nikola Ivanov
In 1907, when Nikola Ivanov moved to , he sold his house to one of the founders of surgery, Doctor Ivan Karamihailov. He was born in , in 1866, as the son of the merchant Mihail Yanev Karamihailov. He is the older brother of one of the first Bulgarian artists in post- Bulgaria, . The young doctor graduated in , where he started a family with the piano and music student Mary Slade, daughter of an English aristocrat. They settled in Sofia with their three children Raina, Ivan, and , who were all born in Vienna. He bought the building, in which he also opened his clinic, with the help of his father-in-law and partly with his own money. Before the family settled into their new home, they built another floor on top of the existing building.
Ivan Karamihailov
Ivan Karamihailov was the court physician of Tsar Ferdinand I and Tsar . At first, the doctor worked in the nursing school, after 1911 he led the newly built building with a surgical and internal department of the Bulgarian Red Cross Hospital, and until 1938 he was a member of its management board. During the wars that took place between 1912 and 1918, he worked for free in military hospitals in the country, donating his salary to treat Bulgarians wounded at the front. The field hospitals were equipped with his wife's funds, and she and her daughters Raina and Elisaveta are on duty as nurses for the wounded in the Red Cross Hospital. After the coup of , 1944, he became interned in Sofia and worked as the head of the surgical department in the hospitals in and . Doctor Ivan Karamihailov died on May 26, 1961, in Sofia, at an age of 95.

Expropriated by the state after 1944, the building was on the verge of collapse before the Union of Architects took it over in 1971 and restored it. The Union of Architects in Bulgaria is a voluntary creative-professional organization of architects from all fields.
Mary Karamihailova with her children Raina, Elisaveta and Ivan
The symmetrical building, which features two , is built in the styles of Eclectic and Neo-Baroque. The building contains many strips of that are decorated with smaller dentils, as well as motifs. Above some of the second floor windows, you can admire a pointed , which features a richly decorated that contains the initials Н.И. (N.I.). The surrounding of the cartouche, as well as the two supportive , are adorned with foliage. Some of the fragments that can be seen underneath the first and second floor windows are embellished with a . Between the turrets, you can see different that are either crowned with a Doric or an Ionic . This part of the building is also decorated with loads of , as well as some that are adorned with a , and that contain the same as the balconies on both sides of the building. The building is also rich in and beautifully decorated windows.
The building in the 1920s