Bulgaria's national art collection, housed in the former Royal Palace on Battenberg Square — the same building that served as the Ottoman governor's residence before 1878. The collection runs from medieval icons through the Bulgarian National Revival painters of the nineteenth century to contemporary work; the strongest galleries are the Revivalist landscape painters (Konstantin Velichkov, Anton Mitov) and the modernists between the wars.
The gallery shares the building with the National Ethnographic Museum, which covers traditional dress, carpets, and folk artefacts. A combined ticket is worth it. Closed Mondays.