Balchik Palace



The Balchik Palace (Дворец в Балчик, Dvorets v Balchik; Castelul din Balcic) is a palace in Balchik, a town and sea side resort located in Dobrich Province, Bulgaria. The official name of the palace was the Quiet Nest Palace.

The palace was constructed between 1926 and 1937, when the Dobrich Province was part of the Kingdom of Romania, as Caliacra County.

The palace complex consists of a number of residential villas, a smoking hall, a wine cellar, a power station, a monastery, a holy spring, a chapel and many other buildings, as well as most notably a park that is today a state-run botanical garden. Balchik Palace is 17 m above sea level.

Architectural complex
Marie of Romania, the wife of Ferdinand I of Romania, visited Balchik in 1921 and liked the location of the summer residence, ordering the vineyards, gardens and water mills of local citizens to be bought so a palace could be constructed at their place. Balkan and Ottoman Turkish motifs were used in the construction of the palace that was carried out by Italian architects Augustino and Americo, while a florist was hired from Switzerland to arrange the park. The main building's extravagant minaret coexists with a Christian chapel, perfectly illustrating the queen's Baháʼí Faith beliefs.

Today many of the former royal villas and other buildings of the complex are reorganized inside and used to accommodate tourists. Some of the older Bulgarian water mills have also been preserved and reconstructed as restaurants or tourist villas.

Botanical garden
In 1940, after the reincorporation of Southern Dobruja in Bulgaria with the Treaty of Craiova, the Balchik Botanical Garden was established at the place of the palace's park. It has an area of 65000 m2 and accommodates 2000 plant species belonging to 85 families and 200 genera. One of the garden's main attractions is the collection of large-sized cactus species arranged outdoors on 1000 m2, the second of its kind in Europe after the one in Monaco. Other notable species include the Metasequoia, the Para rubber tree and the Ginkgo.

Trivia
Francis Ford Coppola spent 11 days at the palace shooting scenes of Youth Without Youth.

Palace

 * Dvoreca.com, official website (in Bulgarian and English)
 * Gallery of the Balchik Palace at Balchik.info
 * Info end history at Balcic.eu
 * Balchik Palace at Journey.bg (in Bulgarian)
 * Gallery of Balchik at the Jurnalul Naţional website (mostly covering the palace; in Romanian)
 * Nikola Gruev's gallery of the palace


 * BulgariaLeisure.com, Tourism Information Portal (in Bulgarian and English)

Botanical garden

 * University Botanical Garden - Balchik, Bulgaria (EN)
 * Balchik Botanical Garden at Balchik.info (in Bulgarian and English)
 * Book about Botanical Garden at Balcic.eu
 * Save the Balchik Botanical Garden! campaign (in Bulgarian)
 * BulgariaLeisure.com, Tourism Information Portal (in Bulgarian and English)