bg Sofia

Confino Brothers Building

- Lege Street 1 -
The former hotel building was built somewhere between 1910 and 1912 and was designed by the Bulgarian architects , and . The building was built for Georgi Kyosev and was used as a hotel under the name Grand Hotel Lege Palace. The hotel, which was built on the site of the former Three Jews barracks, was built somewhere after 1910, as in that same year a shop owned by Varsanov still existed on this plot of land. The building is now known as the former property of the Confino brothers, Baruch and Moshe. The ophthalmologist Dr. Baruch Confino, came from a wealthy Jewish family and graduated in medicine in France. In the early 1940s, his name became famous after he became involved in the illegal transportation of Jews from Bulgaria and Romania to Palestine, which at the time was ruled by Britain.

The Bulgarian capital was by the Allies during the , resulting in the building losing its beautiful attic.
Part of an old advertisement of the Grand Hotel Lege Palace with the attic still intact, 1912
The most eye-catching parts of the beautiful Art Nouveau building are the two . You'll be able to admire two and some relief beams underneath the one on the east side of the building. What is particularly interesting and unusual, is the frivolous flow of the garlands above the second-floor windows. The square-framed fragments between the second and third floor are decorated with floral ornamentation and can be seen in many other places on the building.
Advertising card for the Grand Hotel Lege Palace
The on the fourth floor are decorated with six , geometric oval shapes and in some places even a . On the bottom of the oriel window, which is located on the corner of the building, you can see even more festoons, only these are badly damaged and no longer in their original state. The balcony on top of this oriel window is secured with a lavishly decorated wrought iron railing. More cartouches can be admired on the second and fourth floors. They are placed on the top and on the bottom of the vertical stone block column.
An old photo shows the building on the left