Euxinograd, Royal palace and park in Varna, Bulgaria
Euxinograd is a three-storey palace in Varna, Bulgaria, built in the style of an 18th-century French château. Its long red-brick facade has pale stone quoins, a dark mansard roof with dormer windows, and a ground-level colonnade of slender columns supporting a balcony. A tower at the right end rises above the rest, topped by a steep grey slate roof with a round clock face and a balcony on its upper floor. A formal garden of low clipped hedges and beds of red and white flowers fronts the lower level.
After Prince Alexander Battenberg left, the estate received its current name in 1893 from the Greek word for hospitable sea. Later rulers expanded the grounds and added the wine cellar along with further garden areas.
The park was designed by French landscape architect Édouard André, not Swiss architects, and combines English and French garden styles. It holds over 310 plant varieties from Asia, South America, North Africa and southern France, said to have been chosen by Ferdinand himself. French bronze figures and a sculpture of Neptune stand in the grounds.
Access to the grounds leads through a guarded entrance on the coastal road between Varna and the northern beaches. Visitors should wear comfortable shoes as paths through the park run partly downhill toward the sea.
The pediment of the right wing of the Château de Saint-Cloud, demolished near Paris, was bought by Ferdinand between 1890 and 1891 and carried to Bulgaria by train; it was set into the foundations of the garden terrace rather than the palace facade. The estate's beach is fenced off from ordinary visitors.
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