Wallachia – Valentin Mandache, architectural historian

The early Wallachian style of Balteni church (1626)

14/11/2022Valentin Mandache

This is a brief examination of the emergence of the Wallachian architectural style in the example of Balteni church, 20km north of Bucharest. The nave dates from the early 17th c, and is of a transitional architecture between the old Bulgarian style (the north Balkans Byzantine style) and the indigenous Wallachian one, which emerges properly in the mid-17th c. Here we can also see what I consider elements of Moldavian style (a Byzantine architecture imbued by the Gothic) influence. All of these give tantalising clues about the roots of the architecture native to the principality of Wallachia, the Wallachian style, aka Brancovenesc.

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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.

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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 Contact page of this weblog.

Tour: the Ottoman Bucharest & the Wallachian style

09/11/202215/11/2022Valentin Mandache

Dear readers,

I would like to invite you to a walking tour on the subject of the unique to Romania, Wallachian architecture, also known as Brancovan, an enthralling artistic current of fusion between local Byzantine traditions, Islamic ones of the Ottoman Empire, together with European Renaissance and Baroque elements, an expression of this land being at the juncture of the European and the Oriental civilisations. It emerged in the Principality of Wallachia, chiefly in the 18th century, in an age of stability and prosperity for this frontier province of the Sublime Porte. Bucharest became firmly established as its capital in that period, and, as a result, is endowed with a great assembly of architectural monuments displaying this singular style.

The tour is scheduled to take place on Saturday 12 November 2022, between 13.00h – 15.00h. This cultural excursion could be of interest to any of you visiting Romania’s capital as a tourist or on business, looking to understand the character of this metropolis, through discovering its peculiar and fascinating old architecture, and the social and economic processes underlying it.

Although Bucharest is now a national capital within the European Union, linked primarily with Central and Western Europe, for most of its history, until the last quarter of the 19th century, the town was part of the Ottoman world, of the same mighty empire as Mecca, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo or Tunis. That will give you a perspective of the enormous influence of the Turkish sultanate in this corner of Europe. Add to those geopolitical and cultural coordinates, the remarkable situation of Wallachia, together with neighbouring Moldavia, as the only Christian protectorates of the Islamic empire of the Porte, with their own Christian princes and aristocracy, not colonised with Muslim populations. The mix constituted a civilisational Petri dish inside which the Wallachian (Brancovan) art and architecture got crystallised and evolved. Its European Renaissance and Baroque inputs came via the circuitous route of Istanbul too, through the absorption of Enlightenment ideas by the cosmopolitan Ottoman capital, fanned over to its provinces, and not how one would expect, from the next door Austrian Empire, present over the Carpathian mountains, in Transylvania, where their rugged crest was not only a geographical obstacle with Europe, but also a cultural barrier. Read more →

The historic peasant cemetery of Cotorca, Buzau county

16/11/2020Valentin Mandache

In the middle of the Baragan Prairie, of southeast Romania, there is a historic peasant cemetery conserving Wallachian style stone crosses from the 19th c to the early 20th c. The place is an extraordinary time capsule and a testimony of a long gone way of life, traditions and culture of the rural communities in the plains at the foot of the Great Bend of the Carpathian Mountains.

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My aim, through this series of blog articles, is to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania and Southeast Europe, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of world’s architectural history and heritage.

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If you have a historic house project in Romania or other country in Southeast Europe, I would be delighted to advise you in aspects pertaining to its architectural history and ways to preserve as much as possible from its period fabric and aesthetics in the course of restoration or renovation works, or to counsel you with specialist consultancy work related to that project. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this website.

Vernacular architecture in Southeastern Romania (Baragan Prairie)

03/06/2020Valentin Mandache

The architecture of the peasant houses from the Baragan Prairie of southeast Romania, got contoured starting with the first decades of the 18th c, representing a sui generis synthesis between the type of houses from the Transylvanian Alps and the Great Bend of the Carpathians, encountered among the local Romanian and Hungarian (Szekler) communities, and from what is now central Bulgaria, in regions such as Plovdiv, which in that period were representing the core of the Ottoman culture and power in the northern Balkans. In this video I am charting that process of architectural coalescence between the vernacular architectures to the north and the south of the Baragan Prairie, which we can still admire and examine today in the villages of southeast Romania.

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The Tulip Period and the Wallachian Style

19/05/2020Valentin Mandache

The Wallachian style in art and architecture, which is usually known as Brancovenesc (an incorrect term, in my opinion), was developed in the geopolitical and cultural context of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 17th century, culminating with the first decades of the 18th century, a period in the cultural history of the Ottoman Empire, called the Tulip Period. It is an era of Europeanisation of the Istanbul’s empire’s elite, and experimentation with new artistic models, and their synthesis in what will become the Ottoman Baroque and Rococo. The Wallachian style is a repercussion of those major trends in the special cultural conditions of Wallachia, with its Byzantine heritage, and its political autonomy as an Ottoman vassal, at the frontier of the sultan’s realm. In this video I articulate the broader phenomenon of the Tulip Period, to its narrower and more peculiar manifestation as the Wallachian Style, highlighting its wide international and complex cultural context of those times. Only through such a broad perspective we can understand the meanings and manifestations of the architectural style of Wallachia, that principality’s most important contribution to the world culture.

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The comfort of the peasant houses in Wallachia

28/04/2020Valentin Mandache

There is a stark difference between the comfort of the peasant houses in Wallachia, southern Romania, in the 19th c and the early 20th c, according to their level of wealth, which was tied to their social status as serfs, indentured or free, land owning peasants. That division was reflected in the location of these social sub-classes: the lowlands, the large arable, grain crop regions was the place of the serf and indentured villages, while the highlands, the Subcarpathian hills, was the area of traditionally free peasant communities. This video discusses the marked difference in the comfort of the houses inhabited by those peasant communities of Wallachia, before the breaking up of the large landowning estates, and modernisation of the country.

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Ottoman world influences on the Wallachian style

12/04/2020Valentin Mandache

A brief review of the artistic and architectural influences from throughout the Ottoman Empire into the making of the Wallachian style, the highly original Christian architecture with Islamic overtones of the Principality of Wallachia, the nowadays southern Romania, between the late 17th c and the early 19th c.

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Buzau old high street

10/01/201807/01/2018Valentin Mandache

A presentation of the old commercial street of the town of Buzay in southeast Romania. Its origins date back from the Ottoman times, and it is still retaining an Oriental character. The architecture is still on large portions in Little Paris style, the ornate facades and wrought iron balcony, in provincial fashions typical of the prosperous years of the La Belle Epoque period.

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Buzau Commune Palace

09/01/201807/01/2018Valentin Mandache

Buzau Commune Palace (Palatul Comunal, in Romanian) is a beautiful major piece of public architecture in the early Neo-Romanian style. Its designer is arch. Alexandru Savulescu, and was built between 1899-1903. It exhibits particular characteristics, such as a round/ multifaceted tower, enfilade galleries on the ground level and Art Nouveau overtones. It is one of the amplest edifices in the entire country in the early phase of Romania’s national style.

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Wood burning stoves of the Ottoman era

27/12/2017Valentin Mandache

The domestic heating devices of the Ottoman era Wallachia and Moldavia were the wood burning stoves made from cob, sun dried brick, and/ or burned earth brick, a sort of transition fireplace from the open hearth one typical of the more meridional territories of the Ottoman Empire and the brick and majolica stoves of Central Europe. This video explains their typology, and also elements of symbolism associated with their decoration and design.

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