The blog Historic Houses of Romania is the most comprehensive and read internet resource specialised on the architectural heritage of Romania. The dynamics of its readership show the interest in this subject in diverse regions of the world. That is visualised with statistics generated by a number of websites to which the blog is registered, which do statistics on the number of readers visiting it, where they are from, how long they stay reading the blog or on particular articles, how many times they come back, etc. One of those statistics is the global readers’ distribution in the last 24h, illustrated in the maps presented here. The map above indicates particular locations of my readers, while the map seen bellow is in my view more interesting by imaging the field density of my readership, as a sort of heath map, lending interesting clues about the cultural make up of the regions of the world interested in Romania’s historic architecture.
The widest “red-hot” density is across Europe from its eastern extremity on the Black Sea to the British Isles in the west, along the ancient European highway that links the continent across plains and mountain passes from one side to another, and imprints a certain cultural commonality to peoples dwelling there from times immemorial. It is interesting that the concentration of readers is less “hot” in areas outside that ancient pan-European highway, in areas such as south-western Mediterranean or northern Europe. There are however spots of readers’ activity concentrated on Moscow area, a very cosmopolitan metropolis, Baltic coast and Castile.
The second region with “red-hot” spots is the US and to a lesser extent Canada, where readers are concentrated in tree great areas, first in New England – Mid Atlantic coast states – Great Lakes region, another one in Midwest along the northern Mississippi valley and a third one along the Pacific coast from California to Vancouver. There are smaller “red-hot” spots centred on the culturally diverse Florida and the oil producing region of Calgary, host of a highly cosmopolitan community.
Other “red-hot” spots are in India, in areas with English speaking and international communities such as New Dehli – Patna in the north and the Bombay area in the south west. A smaller red area is in the very international zone of the Gulf States, home of Dubai and other such centres. The south eastern coast of Australia is another area with high concentration of Historic Houses of Romania readers. Perhaps the most surprising for me is the existence of a sizeable such area interested in Romanian historic architecture in the Philippines.
For Africa concentrations of readers can be spotted in the English speaking areas of Lake Victoria and Cape region of South Africa. In the Central and South America concentrations are in some of its great urban centres such as Mexico City, Bogota, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires or Caracas.
As a conclusion, the Historic Houses of Romania blog readers tend to be from areas with certain cultural commonalities as is the case of the ancient European highway or from regions with a large population that are descendants or recent emigrants from that part of Europe, or cosmopolitan, culturally diverse and economically well developed areas of the world that are preoccupied and enjoy finding out about other cultures and civilizations (I would note South Korea in that aspect, with a red spot centred on Seoul, etc.)
Valentin Mandache, architectural historian 