Dear readers, I would like to invite you to a thematic architectural tour, this Sunday 11 October 2020, between the hours 11.30h – 13.30h, on the subject of the exceedingly interesting, but somehow elusive Art Nouveau architecture of Bucharest. The proposed cultural excursion may be of interest to any of you visiting the town as a tourist or on business, looking to … Read more Tour: Art Nouveau Bucharest – Sunday 11 October
I am very much enjoying your site on the buildings of Romania – one of the very few countries, which Nikolaus Pevsner never really explored! I am sure he would have been fascinated by the evidence you present on the Romanian spirit as it influences Art Nouveau and the other movements that interested him so much. … Read more Testimonials
Articles in newspapers and online-based media, books, radio and TV programmes where I was invited to contribute or my blog is specifically mentioned (click the links for access): Article in the Bucharest cultural events monthly magazine Be Where the CityIs about the Historic Houses of Romania thematic tour “Ecclesiastical Bucharest“, on 30 Nov. 2011. [magazine, in Romanian] … Read more In the media
Historic Houses of Romania – Case de Epoca is the liveliest and most professional online resource dedicated to the architectural heritage of this region, written by me, Valentin Mandache. I am an architectural historian, based in Bucharest, trained in the history and civilisation of Southeast Europe at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a wide international experience in the field of cultural studies and consulting.Read more About
As part of the one-to-one interaction with the interested public, I organise architectural scheduled and private walking tours in Bucharest and other towns and parts of Romania or abroad, together with a series of courses, envisioned to spreading the knowledge and appreciation of the local heritage, architectural styles and history, which together represent a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European patrimony.Read more Tours
A historic house is an aesthetic product embodying the fashions of the time when it was built, together with the social and artistic aspirations of its proprietors, often an object of art resulting from the meeting of minds between the architect who designed it and the initial owner. It is also an expression of identity, such as national, regional, cosmopolitan, religious, professional, or ethnic, , reflected in its architectural style and decoration.Read more Consulting
This is an invitation to an architectural history tour in Dorobanti area of Bucharest: open to all of you who would like to accompany me, the author of the Historic Houses of Romania blog, this Saturday 29 August 2020,for two hours, between 11.30h – 13.30h.
I will be your guide through one of the architecturally most distinguished areas of Bucharest, in the same league with neighbouring Kiseleff in its quality of historic buildings. Dorobanti is brimful with architectural wonders, ranging from the finest Neo-Romanian to Art Deco style houses or Read more →
I would like to invite you, in my quality as the author of Historic Houses or Romania – Case de Epoca blog, to an architectural history tour in Cismigiu area of Bucharest. This cultural excursion, open to all interested in Romania’s capital history and identity, is scheduled to take place this Sunday 23 August 2020, for two hours, between 11.30h – 13.30h.
I will be your guide throughout this beautiful expanse of Bucharest, which borders and includes the Cismigiu Gardens, the “Central Park” of this town, which is also its oldest surviving landscaped garden. The quarter boasts a balanced mix of architectures ranging from Little Paris, Art Nouveau, Neoromanian to Art Deco and interwar Modernism, and also representative church buildings, various species of neo-Gothic and Mediterranean styles. Cismigiu is Read more →
I will be conducting a thematic walking tour this Saturday 22 August 2020, between 11.30h – 13.30h, on the less conventional subject of funerary architecture found within the confines of Bellu Cemetery, the most famous and exquisitely embellished necropolis of Romania, the equivalent in these parts of Europe of Paris’ Père Lachaise or London’s Highgate cemetery. It may be of interest to any of you visiting the town as a tourist or on business, looking to find out more about its fascinating historic architecture and identity.
Bellu Cemetery is considered the National Pantheon of this country, containing the graves and remarkable funerary monuments of important personalities that built the modern Romanian nation, people such as Mihai Eminescu, the national poet, Ion Mincu, the initiator of the Neo-Romanian architectural style or general Christian Tell, one of the heroes of 1848 Revolution. It was opened in 1858 as a public burial ground, part of the city’s advanced urban planning developments of the Victorian era, occasioned by a fast increase in population, when Read more →
I would like to invite you to an architectural walk in the picturesque Plantelor Street area, located just east of Mantuleasa. It has an alluring residential character, with well presented historic buildings of architectural value, many surrounded by efflorescent gardens. Plantelor area is a sample of how pleasant and stimulative for artistic creativity this town has been in the La Belle Époque and the interwar periods.
The tour is scheduled to take place this Sunday 16 August 2020, between 11.30h – 13.30h. 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.
The name “Plantelor” (Engl. for “Plants”) given to this iconic street, is an echo of the La Belle Époque times, when Bucharest’s houses of its famous Little Paris and also Art Nouveau architecture were provided with gardens and orchards, and the windows were sporting jardinieres full of multicoloured flowers. The local environment was considered healthier than the rest of the town, which made possible the establishment of a sanatorium, where the national poet of Romania, Mihai Eminescu, spent his Read more →
I would like to invite you to a thematic walking tour this Sunday 9 August 2020, on the subject of the late phase of the Neo-Romanian architectural style, which unfurled mainly in the fourth and the fifth decades of the c20th, a period when this order peculiar to Romania reached a crisis in terms of expression, mitigated by a fascinating synthesis with the Art Deco, Mediterranean and Modernist styles. The tour takes two hours, between 11.30h – 13.30h, and it may be of interest to those of you visiting the city as a tourist or on business, looking to find out more about its enchanting historic architecture and identity.
The modern construction technologies that emerged in the roaring twenties affording the development of light, airy structures expressed in the Art Deco and Modernist architecture, were quite antithetical to the traditionally ornate, heavy-built Neo-Romanian style edifices, as Read more →
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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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 Contactpage of this website.
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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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.
***********************************************
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 Contactpage of this website.
A description of the most mysterious, interesting and romantic leg of the famous Orient Express train route in the La Belle Epoque years, the one between Bucharest and Varna, with period postcards and contemporary photos of old architecture from that period.
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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.
***********************************************
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 Contactpage of this website.
As we now live through a period of dramatic climate change, accompanied by geopolitical upheavals, and even a pandemic, I would like to propose you an excursion in the history of the last two millennia of Europe, from the times of the Roman Empire, until today, and examine how the climate changes of the past, from the thermal maximum of the Roman times, through the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages, to the current global warming, have conditioned the history of its human communities. My focus is on the area of Southeast Europe, or the Balkans as is usually known, especially on the territory occupied nowadays by the state of Romania.
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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.
***********************************************
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 Contactpage of this website.
The national architectural style of Romania, the Neo-Romanian, has not only a time evolution component, but also a development in space, among within the different regions making up this country in southeast Europe. Its three main provinces, Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, have developed distinct histories, cultures and mentalities throughout centuries, a fact reflected in the manner in which they adopted and adapted the national architectural style, which emerged in the modern era, when those provinces got unified within Romania. This is a completely unresearched aspect of the Neo-Romanian architecture, and the my presentation here is a first attempt in fixating the main coordinates of analysing the regional variations of this style of architectural design.
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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.
***********************************************
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 Contactpage of this website.
Dear readers,
Dear Readers,
Dear readers,
Dear readers,