Bulgaria sued its former tsar to take back his palaces, and the Supreme Court gave him Tsarska Bistritsa but the state got Vrana park

Tsar Ferdinand I built the Vrana palace outside Sofia from 1909 to 1912 and the Tsarska Bistritsa hunting lodge near Samokov by 1914. Simeon II became tsar as a child in 1943 and went into exile in 1946. A 1947 law declared the estates of Tsars Ferdinand and Boris and their heirs state property. In 1998 the Constitutional Court declared that law unconstitutional, and Simeon and his sister Maria Louisa got back Vrana, Tsarska Bistritsa, the Saragyol lodge and about 2,100 hectares of forest near Borovets^†. Simeon became prime minister in 2001. Critics said the properties had belonged to the state through the royal Intendancy. The Republic of Bulgaria sued. On 22 August 2014 the Sofia District Court ruled Tsarska Bistritsa state property and ordered the siblings to pay 140,742 leva each for using it from 2006 to 2011. The Sofia Appellate Court upheld the state's ownership on 25 July 2017. On 12 October 2020 the Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed all three of the state's ownership claims to the 21-hectare site and its eight buildings, ruled for Simeon and Maria Louisa, and made the state pay their costs. Vrana went the other way: a court ruled the state owns Vrana park in 2023. On 10 July 2025 Sofia's municipality handed back the keys, and the park closed because the state had not taken it over. In 2026 Simeon, born in 1937, still owns Tsarska Bistritsa.