I really loved, when I used to live in London, the round blue coloured memorial plaques adorning old buildings, telling passers by about famous people from painters, explorers, to musicians and scientists who in the past lived there. The practice is encountered in many countries, and Romania is no exception. A memorial plaque on an old house, attesting that someone famous has lived there represents an important value added element to that property. The problem in Romania is the many shapes and various aesthetics in which the memorial plaques emerge on the street walls. However, recently I was able to photograph two delightful brass plaques, which I encountered in the Batistei area of Bucharest. There is no acknowledgment of the organisation(s) using that plaque design, responsible for putting them on the wall (they might have been afixed decades ago), but certainly would be a good idea to have this tasteful design adopted on a larger scale throughout the old city.
The first plaque, affixed on a Little Paris style house, now a clinic, is dedicated to Field marshal Constantin Prezan. He was one of the prominent heroes of the Great War in Romania.
The second plaque is dedicated to novelist Mateiu Caragiale, a famous local writer who wrote about Bucharest high society during the carefree years of la Belle Epoque. His most famous novel is “Craii de Curtea Veche” (The Old Court Libertines), which in a way recreates the athmosphere of Bucharest as Little Paris in the period before the First World War. The plaque is fixed on a Neo-Classical-Modernist mixed style house in one of the leafier corners of Batistei area.
©Valentin Mandache
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