Vrana Palace (; formerly ; ) is a former royal palace, on the outskirts of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It is today the official residence of former royal family of Bulgaria. While the Royal Palace in the centre of Sofia (today the National Art Gallery and National Ethnographic Museum) served representative purposes and the Euxinograd Palace near Varna was a summer residence, Vrana was the palace where the royal family of Bulgaria spent most of their time. Vrana Palace is situated at an elevation of 571 m. It includes the site of Chardakli farm, where there was a bridge which featured in the liberation of Sofia. History The extensive lot was bought by Tsar Ferdinand I in 1898 and was situated just outside Sofia whereas nowadays is inside the city proper. There is a large park and two buildings, the first one built in 1904 as a two-story hunting lodge commissioned to Georgi Fingov, and the second constructed mainly between 1909 and 1914 as a palace, both with money from the state budget. The earliest building in the complex, the hunting lodge, has been described architecturally as an "exquisite interpretation of the Plovdiv baroque with Viennese decorative elements". Three rooms of the three-storey palace commissioned to the noted architect Nikola Lazarov were later furnished in the Baroque style, one in the style of the Austrian royal palaces and one in a Bulgarian national style, while the study was designed in a Venetian style. The palace features a carved wooden ceiling, oak wainscoting, built-in metal plates and Delftware. The interior columns are made of Carrara marble and an old Schindler lift is still in use. In terms of architecture, the Vrana Palace combines Byzantine influences, Bulgarian National Revival traditions, Art Nouveau and French classicism. The Karelian Hall is a gift from Alexander III of Russia, and all of its furniture (the table, the chairs and the dressing table) are made of Karelian birch by master woodworkers specially sent from Russia. The first storey also has a cinema hall and tea halls, the second storey is where the apartments are located, and the third one used to be allocated to the servants and the court. In 1918 Vrana passed from Tsar Ferdinand to Boris III. Here he faced the new government after the military coup on 9 June 1923. In August 1943, it became the property of Simeon II. The main