Old Town Bucharest EN: All About the Wonders of Romanian Bucharest Old Town

By Claudia Properties

Welcome to the wonderful, mysterious and majestic world of Little Paris. Old Bucharest can barely wait to be discovered in its entire historical, architectural and cultural splendor. Every wall, building and alley has a fascinanting story about interwar Bucharest and our priority is to help you come closer to the treasures hidden behind them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9789730178586

Book preview

PUBLISHING: Claudia Properties

PHOTOGRAPHY: Larisa Fica & Mihai Militaru

EDITING: Gia Tudoran

RESEARCH: Gia Tudoran

GRAPHIC DESIGN: Ovidiu Platon

ISBN

978-973-750-246-9

www.claudiaproperties.com

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When we don’t know how it’s like in another place, we don’t know how to appreciate all that is beautiful in our own country. Even worse, we convey this distorted image to others.

Claudia Florentina

Foreword

Bucharest is a city that, due to the cruelty of its history, does not dispose of many prestigious traces of its past. The earthquakes, fires and hav- oc wreaked by foreign armies that have invaded our capital left us with no other memories from the past besides churches. Only from the end of the Phanariot era, but especially from the 19th century, do we have testimonies that have resisted to this day, testimonies which, unfortunately, are most of the time damagaed for the sake of the petty interests of those involved in real estate and their associates.

Among these testimonies are also most of the buildings that are included in what we now call Old Town Bucharest, a pedestrian space for entertainment, but also a highly valuable urban museum that still requires extensive restoration, unfortunately postponed again and again. This book has the great merit of creating a competent description of this center and it is an evocation of its true past, but also its legends. It allows a proper and correct understanding of this district and an appreciation of its artistic and historical importance.

This district contains two distinct parts.

We have the first part, older and more picturesque, with a commercial character, in which, besides the Old Court ensemble with its prestigious past and the churches that are remarkable through their beauty, but also their history, which includes old inns, but also those commercial buildings made by merchants with generally unknown architects. These buildings have shops at their ground floors and living space upstairs and delight us with their façades, unfortunately not restored enough, that reveal an intriguing ubran vision from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries with a stylistic variety that combines Eastern Constantinopolitan models with Central European ones. It was a manorial district (The Bălăceanu Slums) that transformed into a merchant and craftsmen district. We also have the second part, from the north and east of Old Town, which stands out through large buildings, generally designed by foreign ar- chitects – especially from France – and gréât Romanian architects who also studied in France, buildings in a classical, romantic but especially eclectic style, inspired by the appearce of Napoleon the Third’s Paris and mostly belonging to the banking world, beginning with the National Bank of Romania Palace that was sort of a spearhead. It is a portion which, together with the buildings on Calea Victoriei and those on a few other boulevards and streets of late 19th century Bucharest, define what was metaphorically named Little Paris.

The author of the book, Gia Tudoran, takes us on a walk through these two component and tells us about what people remember about the events that took place here. Besides two or three major happenings, most of them are minor incidents belonging to this small history (« petite histoire »), which brightens up the larger history, makes it more sensible and allows us to understand the mentality of bygone times.

The author describes the apperance today as being new, very different from the one in the past. Now the former commerical component has become more of a tourist venue and has been invaded by restaurants, bistros, bards, clubs etc., which have expanded outside of the pedestrian area with their tables and umbrellas. The audience mainly consists of spectators, people who want to relax, dine or enjoy a coffee, bear, res- freshment or alcoholic beverage.

In the interwar period that I have experienced and before this as well, this was a purely commercial area with shops and booths, full of goods inside or displayed outside on stalls, with façades covered by posters and multicolored brands. Among them you can find a workshop here, a small hotel there, a restaurant or pub, a hidden bar or an entertainment venue. There was also a market with well-stocked halls and a pic- turesque market filled with ladies selling flowers and gypsies waiting to be offered work, both streets that no longer exist today. The audience consisted of hurried and concerned shoppers who thronged and belonged to all social strata, from peasants and suburbanites to figures of the great bourgeoisie, military priests and monks to workers or noblement, from students to teachers or state employees. Outside the pedestrian area, automobiles, trucks and carriages would be crammed one into the other. There was a bustle of people and typical vehicles. It was a dy- namic distract where all the main roads of old Bucharest branched out from.

I hope this book will spark the interest of those who are responsible for the urban planning of our capital.