National Palace of Culture

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Front view of NDK with the Vitosha mountain in the background

The National Palace of Culture (Bulgarian: Национален дворец на културата; abbreviated as НДК, NDK), located in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, is the largest multifunctional congress, conference, convention and exhibition centre in Southeastern Europe. It was opened in 1981.

In July 2005, the National Palace of Culture was proclaimed the best congress centre in the world for the year by the International Organization of Congress Centres [1].

The congress centre has a wide variety of technical equipment at its disposal in order to host different types of events, such as concerts, conferences, exhibitions and shows. It has an area of 123,000 m² on eight floors and three underground levels. The National Palace of Culture has 13 halls and 15,000 m² of exhibition area, a trade centre and a car park. Sofia Film Fest, an annual film festival held in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia takes place in NDK.

Curiously, more than 10,000 tons of steel were used for the construction of the NDK - 3,000 more than the Eiffel Tower.

[edit] Halls

Data is according to the official website. Hall 12 is reserved for journalists and no public events are held there.

Hall	Area (m²)	Height (m)	Capacity (by seat arrangement)
Hall	Area (m²)	Height (m)	concert	classroom	n-wise	meeting	banquet	cocktail party
Hall 1	11,000	-	3,880	-	-	-	-	-
Hall 2	995	-	510	-	-	-	-	-
Hall 3	1,650	6.5	1,500	540	400	150	460	1,200
Hall 3.1	300	3	200	90	70	54	110	220
Hall 3.2	300	3	200	90	70	54	110	220
Hall 4	300	3	150	60	45	30	80	150
Hall 5	300	3	150	60	45	30	80	-
Hall 6	480	6	480	220	144	78	240	600
Hall 7	380	6.5	280	130	90	72	200	400
Hall 8	380	6.5	280	130	90	72	200	400
Hall 9	380	6.5	280	130	90	72	200	400
Hall 10	450	3	280	130	120	72	220	400
Hall 11	400	-	380	-	-	-	-	-
Hall 13	300	-	200	-	-	200	300	300