Vlach identity

There are sizable communities of Vlachs settled in and around Bucharest. The photograph bellow shows a Neo-Romanian style house dating from the 1910s, around the time of the Balkan Wars, displaying the name “Villa Cutika”, where Cutika is a Vlach feminine gender name.

Vlach is a collective term applied usually to peoples speaking Romance languages, others than Romanian, in the Balkan Peninsula. As you are familiar with the Romance speaking peoples of Western Europe, such as Spaniards, French or Italians, the same is the case in Eastern Europe, where there are smaller population peoples speaking Romance languages, descendants of the Roman colonists and Romanised natives from the time when the Roman Empire ruled the area two millenia ago. The Romanian language is the largest represented in terms of population Eastern Romance idiom, followed by a number of Vlach languages, such as Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian or Istro-Romanian. The nationalist movements that have affected the Balkan Peninsula in the last two centuries have often brought tragedies, such as discrimination and ethnic cleansing, upon the Vlach communities, who were allways a minority living in the midst of ethically different majority peoples then emerging as modern nations, such as the Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbians. The Romanian national state, in its turn, considered its duty to protect and give refuge to its etnic kin, the Vlachs, often wrongly regarded by the Romanian officials, historians and linguists as just speakers of mere Romanian dialects.

The house that hosts the tablet shown in the photography bellow was built by such a Vlach refugee family in Romania, perhaps around the time of the Balkan Wars, on a plot of land granted by the government. The style of the house is Neo-Romanian, being a fitting patriotic statement in architectural terms made by the proprietors to their adoptive country, also stating clearly the Vlach identity through the name tablet. The house is on Rumeoara Street, which sounds Vlach to me and it may well be the name of the region in the Balkans (Greece, etc.) from where the families settled on that street originate.

“Villa Cutika”- Vlach name tablet on Neo-Romanian style house dating from the 1910s, Fire Watchtower area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

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I endeavour through this series of periodic articles to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural history and heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring or selling a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing and transacting the property, specialist research, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contactpage of this weblog.

Vlach identity

There are sizable communities of Vlachs settled in and around Bucharest. The photograph bellow shows a Neo-Romanian style house dating from the 1910s, around the time of the Balkan Wars, displaying the name “Villa Cutika”, where Cutika is a Vlach feminine gender name.

Vlach is a collective term applied usually to peoples speaking Romance languages, others than Romanian, in the Balkan Peninsula. As you are familiar with the Romance speaking peoples of Western Europe, such as Spaniards, French or Italians, the same is the case in Eastern Europe, where there are smaller population peoples speaking Romance languages, descendants of the Roman colonists and Romanised natives from the time when the Roman Empire ruled the area two millenia ago. The Romanian language is the largest represented in terms of population Eastern Romance idiom, followed by a number of Vlach languages, such as Macedo-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian or Istro-Romanian. The nationalist movements that have affected the Balkan Peninsula in the last two centuries have often brought tragedies, such as discrimination and ethnic cleansing, upon the Vlach communities, who were allways a minority living in the midst of ethically different majority peoples then emerging as modern nations, such as the Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbians. The Romanian national state, in its turn, considered its duty to protect and give refuge to its etnic kin, the Vlachs, often wrongly regarded by the Romanian officials, historians and linguists as just speakers of mere Romanian dialects.

The house that hosts the tablet shown in the photography bellow was built by such a Vlach refugee family in Romania, perhaps around the time of the Balkan Wars, on a plot of land granted by the government. The style of the house is Neo-Romanian, being a fitting patriotic statement in architectural terms made by the proprietors to their adoptive country, also stating clearly the Vlach identity through the name tablet. The house is on Rumeoara Street, which sounds Vlach to me and it may well be the name of the region in the Balkans (Greece, etc.) from where the families settled on that street originate.

“Villa Cutika”- Vlach name tablet on Neo-Romanian style house dating from the 1910s, Fire Watchtower area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

***********************************************

I endeavour through this series of periodic articles to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural history and heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring or selling a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing and transacting the property, specialist research, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contactpage of this weblog.

Evolution of the Neo-Romanian architectural style

Neo-Romanian houses showing this style's evolution over at least one decade and a half (ie early-'20s - mid-'30, Soseaua Viilor area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

I found the two Neo-Romanian houses pictured above as very instructive in showing the evolution of this style during a quite short period in the first part of the c20th, when technology innovations, new building materials and fashions gave a new dynamism to the Romanian architectural scene. The buildings are located next to each other, fronting the street, and therefore excellently placed for an outside observer to study their differences and style intricacies.

The building at the top is the earlier built one, dating probably from the early 1920s, possibly mid-1910s, just before Romania entered the Great War (1916). An elements which distinguishes it as being from that period is the heavy wall structure made mostly from brickwork, which afforded a limited number of window openings and just a single upper floor. Stylistically the house has many elements peculiar to the early Neo-Romanian style such as indentations mimicking the crenels of a fortress  and other citadel-like motifs seen on the veranda and top of the faux tower at the centre. Other early Neo-Romanian aspects are the Byzantine-Ottoman inspired window frames and arches as well as the chunky grapevine motif frieze, all echoing the Art Nouveau current popular in the previous decades. There are also elements borrowed from the Little Paris style (French c19th historicist architecture interpreted in a provincial manner in Fin de Siecle Romania) noticeable especially in the steep slope roof crowning the faux tower.

The second building, at the bottom of the photograph, belongs to the mid-1930s era, when the wider use of structural elements made from reinforced concrete afforded a much slender appearance and also a greater amount of fenestration, additional floor levels and a taller roof. Stylistically one can easily notice a departure from the Ottoman and Byzantine motifs (present here mostly in the ornamentation of the faux tower roof, most prominent such element being the beautiful finial that crowns that sector of the roof) toward the Art Deco. The syncretism between the Neo-Romanian and the Art Deco is especially displayed in the reticular ornamentation of the balcony fences and the aspect of the window frames.

These two buildings are a proof of the dynamism of the inter-war Romanian architectural scene and of the flexibility and adaptability of the Neo-Romanian style to evolving fashions, concepts and technologies.

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I endeavor through this daily series of daily articles to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural history and heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Scroviste Royal Palace (via Diana Mandache’s Weblog)

The Scroviste Royal Palace located about 20km north of Bucharest among lakes and forests, has been one of the favourite summer and week end retreats of King Ferdinand of Romania. Before the palace was built, there was just a hunting lodge used by Ferdinand, and from that basis new buildings and amenities were added in the subsequent decades. Today the palace is still used by the presidency of Romania although it was much modified duri … Read More

via Diana Mandache’s Weblog

Neo-Romanian Style Architectural Lettering: Photomontage & Slide Show

Neo-Romanian style architectural lettering: examples dating from 1890s to 1940s, except the upper right hand corner panel Latin type derived from Old Church Cyrillic letters as seen in the c18th Bucharest church votive inscription from the upper left hand corner of this photomontage. (©Valentin Mandache)

The Neo-Romanian style architectural lettering is a Latin type rendering using peculiar letter shapes inspired from the Cyrillic script of the Old Church Slavonic texts. This distinctive rendering conveys a powerful identity message reflected in the use by the Romanian language speakers of both scripts throughout their history. The Romanian language is a Romance/ Latin origin idiom, sharing many similar traits with Portuguese and Sardinian, but with a strong Slavic influence over its vocabulary and grammar. That is the result of the historical cultural development of the Romanian communities in close contact with speakers of Slavic languages in South East Europe and as followers of a Christian Orthodox creed based for centuries on Old Church Slavonic liturgy. As a consequence, the influence extended to the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in rendering the Romanian language, until well into the c19th. The alphabet reform of mid c19th, a part of the then nation building process, saw the adoption of the Latin alphabet, perceived as more prestigious and proper for a Latin people, proud of its roots in the ancient Empire of Rome. However, the Romanians kept hankering back to the symbolism and messages of the Cyrillic script associated with the heroic medieval times of battles and resistance against the Catholic power of the Hungarian Kingdom or the Islam of the Ottoman Empire. That coincides with the identity messages of the Neo-Romanian order, that has its ideological roots in the c19th national romantic movement and glorification of the medieval past. As a consequence, the architectural lettering is a very important component of the Neo-Romanian decorative panoply. I collected in the photomontage above examples of this type of letter rendering from a multitude of sources: architect’s name tablets, proprietor’s name, school plaques, house name inscriptions, etc. dating from 1890s (see the Art Nouveau like shapes) to 1940s (see the discernible Art Deco patterns on the panel at the centre of the photomontage). There is also, for comparison, an old votive inscription in the Cyrillic script dating from 1715, that adornins the ‘Saint Apostles’ church in Bucharest, visible on the upper left hand corner of the photomontage. The panels are also displayed individually in the slide show bellow.

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I endeavor through this daily series of articles to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Art Nouveau Outlines in A Neo-Romanian Style Doorway Assembly

Art Nouveau echoes in a late 1920s Neo-Romanian style doorway assembly, Cotroceni area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

The Neo-Romanian architectural style emerged at the end of c19th together with other European national romantic movements in visual arts that saw the emergence of national architectural styles in countries spanning from Scandinavia to the Balkans. These styles were initially an expression of the internationalist Art Nouveau experiments of the time, taking inspiration from the local national traditions. Particular for Romania was that this Art Nouveau ambiance and character was still in use in many instances in the local architecture until the late 1920s and even in some cases in the 1930s, long after the twilight of the Art Nouveau and other national romantic styles elsewhere in Europe. The image above shows one such telling example of powerful Art Nouveau echoes in a late 1920s Neo-Romanian style doorway assembly that still preserves very prominent Fin de Siècle national-romantic forms (short Byzantine type columns, oversized decorations inspired from medieval Wallachian church architecture, the red paint as an allusion to the Pompeian Red colour and through that to the ancient Roman/ Latin origins of the Romanian people, etc).

***********************************************

I endeavor through this daily series of daily articles to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.