Eclectic Is The Word – Greg and Mandy's Travels

Did an Urban Adventures tour of Bucharest today, led by an architecture student by the name of Alex. If you wanted to know about neo-romanian architecture, and how the art nouveau style influenced the french classical architects of the time to incorporate Chicago influences whilst retaining classical details over the gothic features, then Alex was your man. Unfortunately, he wasn’t my man. Didn’t matter much, as the other three on the tour were architecture students, presumably which was why we got this guide, and they all had a bang up time discussing the modernity of soviet architecture, so we nodded wisely for a while before my eyes glazed over.

Alex had a mission to convince us that the true style of architecture in the city was ’eclectic’ (“Have you heard of that?”), and it seems we saw buildings displaying every one of the various styles in our three hours in an effort to make his point.

We did pass by Stavropoleos Monastery, built in 1724, which survived the wars and the communists, and has an amazing set of icons adorning the walls and frontispieces from around 1750 which are well preserved. Was granted a minute to go in and look as it didn’t have any architectural merit, while the students waited outside.

Given that I can see your eyes are also beginning to glaze over, let me give you the potted and approximately accurate history of Romania.

Romania is a large country. Back in days of yore, there were three local principalities in the area – Moldavia (which we won’t talk about much), Wallachia (modern day Bucharest region), and Transylvania (Vlad the Impaler, Dracula to you – more about that tomorrow). They joined together in an effort to kick out the waning Ottoman Empire in 1866, and called themselves Romania.

They recognised that they didn’t have any experience in forming a united society, defeating the Turks, and ruling a country, so they did a deal with Germany who sent them Prince Karl to be the new King Carol I. Carol formed an alliance with Russia, and defeated the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. As a reward, they were recognised as an independent kingdom, and King Carol reigned over a prosperous country in it’s golden age up to his death in 1914, just as World War I broke out. At that time, Romania was Europe’s second largest oil producer and second largest food producer.

Romania stayed out of WW1 for a time until Austria made them a secret deal, promising them a share of conquered lands. Of course this went badly.

The outbreak of the second world war saw King Carol II, his nephew, on the throne. Not your wisest choice. Not even an ok choice. He had several marriages, lots of affairs, aligned the country with Nazi Germany, adopted anti-semitic laws and ultimately evolved into a dictator. In 1940 he was forced to abdicate and go into exile, leaving his 19 year old son Michael as the next king.

Germany were relying on the oil, the Allies were regularly bombing it, and they were on the opposite side to their neighbours Russia. Not an ideal situation for a 19 year old in the middle of WWII. In late 1944, Michael succeeded in changing sides, but nobody forgave them. Russia annexed some of their land, and installed a puppet communist regime that lasted until 1989. The communists installed Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1965, and there aren’t enough nasty things you can say about him. The bloody Romanian Revolution in December 1989, when Ceausescu fled by helicopter from the roof of his headquarters, was one of the catalysts for the fall of communist regimes around the world.

So today we walked past many of the palaces, ministerial buildings and communist headquarters, marvelling at the juxtaposition of soviet power architecture with previous neo classical forms, whilst incidentally gleaning some bits of the history.

Lunch at a french patisserie where I marvelled at the juxtaposition of meringue and chocolate mousse, before heading back to the apartment late in the afternoon.