bg Sofia

Dimitar Tonchev House

- 6 September Street 5 -
The residential building was built in 1897 by a project of the German architect Anton Haderer. It was built for the Bulgarian lawyer and politician Dimitar Stoyanov Tonchev. He was born on November 7, 1859, in and graduated in law at the Novorossiysk University in . After his return to Bulgaria, he was a judge in and from 1884 he was a lawyer, and in 1885 he moved to Sofia.

After the against Prince of Battenberg, he became part of the movement led by , which began to be known as the People's Liberal Party. He was Speaker of Parliament from 1887 until 1888 and Minister of Justice from 1888 until 1891. In 1891 he left the government and joined the Radoslavist Party. Over the next few years, in which he joined the opposition, he wrote several works on civil law.
Dimitar Stoyanov Tonchev
Together with and , he was the leader of one of the three parties in the liberal coalition that ruled during the . He was arrested on November 4, 1919, after which he was sentenced by the Third State Court to life imprisonment as one of the main culprits for Bulgaria's involvement in the war and for the subsequent Second National Catastrophe. He was in prison until 1924 when he was pardoned. In the following years, Tonchev withdrew from active political activity and wrote an eight-volume commentary on the Law on Obligations and Contracts. Dimitar Tonchev died on February 20, 1937, in Sofia, at the age of 77.
An old aerial postcard showing the building on the right
The symmetrical building was built in the Neo-Baroque style and is lavishly decorated with . The underneath the attic floor is interrupted by a broken segmental with a dormer in its midst. The scaly sheet metal mansard roof contains some more dormers but they are a lot smaller than the ones in the broken pediment. The , which are located underneath the cornice, are lavishly decorated with foliage. Above the door that leads to the balcony, there is an elegant small balcony with a stone balustrade, which is embellished with . The balcony door is flanked by with Ionic . Above the balcony door, you can admire a , which is decorated with yellow-colored acanthus foliage. The two supportive underneath the balcony are decorated with and three . The cornice between the first and second floor contains a circle motif with on the background some decorative floral elements. Another lavishly decorated cartouche can be seen, just above the main entrance door. The wood carved main entrance door is adorned with beautiful decorative ornaments and contains two lovely wrought iron barred windows.
An old colorized photo showing the building on the far left