The billboard in the picture bellow shows the name of a Bucharest medical centre, called “EUROSANITY”. It just made me instantly smile! I was left wondering at what it refers to. Perhaps to state of mind of the European Parliament as a model of mental health for Romanians to follow. Any other suggestion?
©Valentin Mandache
Bucharest, "Eurosanity" Medical Centre 2009 (©Valentin Mandache)
On 25 January, the mayor of Bucharest, Mr. Sorin Oprescu, has visited his Czech counterpart in Prague in order to learn from Prague’s successful experience in applying and using EU funds for the regeneration of its historic centre. Prague Old City is now one of the main tourist attractions in Europe and a vital revenue generator for the city.
Bucharest’s story is Prague’s reverse of the coin. The regeneration process of Lipscani, the historic quarter of Romania’s capital, is in dangerous disarray, the heritage buildings located there risking an irreversible degradation.
Tourists strolling in Prague Old City
Bucharest 2009, a desolate street in bad repair, Lipscani historic quarter (©Valentin Mandache)
That is the result of years of procrastination from the authorities, two decades long protracted ownership disputes generated by the usurpations of the communist era and a property bubble that saw prices skyrocket to unsustainable levels, higher that in locations such as Paris’ Le Marais.
This article is scheduled in three parts in which I present one of the most exquisite artefacts of Bucharest’s period architecture from the years around 1900s, namely the IRON BALCONIES, an often overlooked architectural element which nevertheless is representative within the city’s great panoply of styles and buildings.
Bucharest 1900s residential building with wrough iron balcony (©Valentin Mandache)
The era of railways made iron a widely available material employed in all domains, notably in the building industry. The architecture of the period reflected the use of that important metal, cast or wrought, in many examples of remarkable artistic design from gates, fences, roofs, stair rails to of course balconies (a type of fence or rail).
The intricately worked iron balconies that emerged in late Victorian era complemented and enhanced the architectural detail of the building façade, conferring it a distinguished personality. In tows like New Orleans and Paris, many of the late 19th – early 20th century period buildings became thus famous for their emblematic iron balconies.
The Bran area of Romania enjoys stunning landscapes, a rich history and is visited by thousands of tourists every year. Through the heart of the region, a spectacular mountain pass links the old Saxon town of Brasov (Kronstadt) in Transylvania to the province of Wallachia.
Bran Castle
Furthermore, the famous Bran Castle can be found here. In legend home to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this impressive medieval fortress is a former residence of Romania’s ‘English’ queen, Queen Marie (granddaughter of Queen Victoria), and centuries ago visited by the medieval prince, Vlad the Impaler (on whom it is thought Dracula was based). Historically, the building was a customs point controlling the major trade route between northern and southeastern Europe, the scenic ‘Bran Pass’.
Geography/Distances
The Bran Pass is flanked on the west by the rugged crest of Piatra Craiului and on the east by the great peaks of Bucegi, both more than 2000 m (6000 ft) in height. These form part of the Transylvanian Alps, one of the imposing alpine mountain ranges in Europe, which in addition to magnificent peaks, features a great network of streams, rivers and deep gorges. The local climate is continental-temperate; similar to the mountain passes of the Pyrenees or Italian Alps and the natural shelter of the pass favors accumulation of the area’s substantial winter snowfall, perfect for winter sports.
Piatra Craiului Mountains
The arterial road ‘E574′ goes through the pass and leads to Brasov (35km, 350,000 inhabitants) in the north and in a southerly direction passes through the Carpathian highlands to Campulung (a small, picturesque town), Pitesti (200,000 inhabitants) and finally reaching Bucharest after 200 km. The Bran area is further served by a regional road (the future motorway sector) to the Prahova Valley 25 km away, also a major Romanian centre for mountain tourism.
The following post has previously been published by Diana Mandache in her weblog on the history of Romanian royalty. Banloc Manor from the Banat region in western Romania represents one of the many examples of grand period properties that once belonged to Romania’s royals and important aristocrats, which in the last decades suffered abuse and are now left to deteriorate, facing an uncertain future. However, there are also a number of positive examples that signal an encouraging trend and I mention here the Royal Savarsin Castle from the same region as Banloc, which is now back in the property of former King Michael of Romania. That estate is currently undergoing a thorough restoration, planned to function as a private residence and also as an ecofriendly hotel. Another example is Count Kálnoky’s castle in central Transylvania that is now a successful hospitality business and organic farm.
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Princess Elisabeta of Romania, the former Queen of Greece, bought Banloc Manor in 1935 from the Karátsonyi family, local Hungarian-Italian aristocrats, from the Banat region of Romania. Elisabeta restored and remodelled the manor, using it as a holiday residence for herself and other members of the royal family, among them King Michael of Romania and Helen, the Queen Mother.
Bucharest has a large stock of exquisite period properties that are in an advanced state of disrepair, with many among them too expensive to restore or renovate due to their advanced structural and architectural detail decay.
However there are innovative ways to put back life into an old and attractive building by grafting modern architectural shapes and innovations on the old fabric of the period property. The method has been applied in countless cases in Western European countries, combining the period look with modern or avant-garde architecture. An epitome of this approach is the well known example of the German Parliament building in Berlin left as a war ruin for half a century and finally resurrected by the stunning architectural creation of Sir Norman Foster.
Bucharest also contains an interesting such example, much reduced in scale and scope, namely the old building that used to host the embassy of the Austian-Hungarian Empire, which nevertheless deserves to be known and popularised as there are many other beautiful buildings in this town on the point of near-collapse necessitating imaginative modern interventions for their resurrection. The former imperial embassy fittingly hosts today the headquarters of the Architects’ Union of Romania.
The Architects' Union of Romania edifice located within the structure of a famous mid-19th century Bucharest building
"Taste of Romania" by Nicolae Klepper
Acquiring, restoring and owning a period property requires a great deal of intellectual work. One has to study and construct an entire imaginary map of the artistic/ architectural value of the building, its history and not the least to attempt recreating the atmosphere and lifestyle associated with the house.
The cuisine specific to the country or the region where the property is located is the usually overlooked aspect in that effort. I believe that finding out how the locals cook or what kind of ingredients they use is an important aspect in successfully recreating the atmosphere and character of a period/ traditional house.
The article is entitled In Bucharest, a Flourishing Housing Market, published in October ’07, but still particularly relevant for the Bucharest period property market. NYT journalist Jon Gorvett reports on the experiences of American expatriates living in the city:
Leslie Hawke, mother of Ethan Hawke, the actor, is one such resident. She moved here seven years ago and now lives in a rooftop apartment on the city’s main street, Calea Victoria.
It’s Bucharest’s Fifth Avenue,” she said, looking down from her 45-square-meter (485-square-foot) terrace, which curves around her apartment. “It has all the major department stores and museums, palaces and squares.”
He also mentions the heterogeneous architecture of the city in which prime place is taken by French 19th century urban styles that imprint Bucharest the well known character of “Little Paris”:
Spreading out below her apartment is the eclectic jumble of downtown. And across the rooftops are the onion domes of a Russian church rising above 19th-century French-style apartment buildings. This is Europe’s sixth-largest city, with a population of 1.9 million.
Ms. Hawke’s 1930s-era apartment has 95 square meters (over 1,000 square feet) of living space, with a large living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom, and is just a few minutes’ walk from her office.
The text bellow entitled “My Dream-Houses” was written by Queen Marie of Romania in the 1920s. Marie was Romania’s English Queen, a niece of Queen Victoria, born and raised at Eastwell Manor, near Ashford, Kent. In the text she refers and describes with vivid imagination Romanian traditional houses and also her own country residences. The document thus represents an excellent insight by a most qualified witness into the ambiance of an epoch from when most of Romania’s period property stock dates. Narrative accounts like this are a great means to form a better image for anyone looking for a dream-house of their own in Romania.
(This post has initially been published in Diana Mandache’s weblog )
Queen Marie of Romania in peasant costume on the veranda of a traditional house, end 19th c. (Diana Mandache collection)
“To possess a home of her own is the dream of every woman’s life. No matter how small, how modest, but she wants it to be her very own, her nest, her refuge, her retreat. Even as a child, in imagination I was always building my home. I saw it in many shapes, for I was always a visionary. Beautiful pictures filled my soul, but I also wanted to create. Visions alone did not suffice me; I wanted to build, to realize, to accomplish. A sister, a year younger than myself, was my constant companion; with her I shared my dreams, and it was together with her that I built my first little dream-house. Absurd as it sounds, we built it out of a cast-away cupboard which an old family servant had obtained for us, I can’t remember how. We stood up this cupboard in a shady place among some bushes, added a thatched roof and painted a large heart upon its green door. The paint ran, so the heart became a bleeding heart, and in this narrow retreat we sat hand in hand dreaming. That was in my childhood.
I highly advise anyone looking to buy a period property in Bucharest to research as in depth as possible the history and character of this complex and substantial city at the eastern edge of the European Union. That would be a necessary task before fine tunning your search on particular streets, architectural styles or artistic value of the sought property. I compiled here a short presentation of the city which I hope would be a good start in your endeavours.
* Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is an enormous city, the 6th largest metropolis of the European Union after London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid and ahead of capital cities like Budapest, Prague or Warsaw (see EU statistical data). It is also the largest population centre between Vienna and Istanbul, on a territory twice as large as France.
History:
1. The town originated as a minor settlement on shepherd routes that converged to the fording places between the Arges and the Dambovita rivers. The mythical founder of the first settlement is said to be the shepherd Bucur (a name of Thracian – Dacian origin, also fond in the Albanian- an Illyrian language, meaning joyous man). This is why sometimes Bucharest is called the “City of Joy” (“Orasul Bucuriei” in Romanian). It has became a princely seat and capital of Wallachia under Vlad the Impaler in 15th century and from then on developed for the next four centuries as an Oriental market town and administrative centre under the domination of the Ottoman Empire.
Shepherd Bucur's church- tradition says that it is located on the place of the first settlement of Bucharest
2. The town was modernised on European lines under the reign of King Carol I, toward the end of the 19th century reaching a zenith in terms of glamour and sophistication during the inter-war period.
King Carol I of Romania (1881-1914), the moderniser of Bucharest (Valentin Mandache collection)
Boyar mansion (conac) from southeastern Romania.
