Tag: Moldavia

Daily Picture 3-Dec-09: Spa Town Music Kiosk

Valentin Mandache
Art Nouveau style music kiosk in Slanic Moldova, a spa town in the Oriental Carpathian mountains, north-east Romania (1910s postcard, Valentin Mandache collection)

The Victorians from England to India had a penchant for spa towns. Romania, with its Carpathian mountains, a chain of over 1,000 km in length on its Romanian sector, one of the longest such landscape formations in Europe, is especially propitious for development of spa towns around the innumerable thermal or curative mineral water springs located within that Alpine environment. The development of the country on modern European lines under the efficient rule of the German origin King Carol I in the second part of the c19th saw the emergence of numerous spa towns in the Carpathians. The architecture was similar and typical of the age with examples from Central Europe or France and Belgium. Many of these buildings and facilities still survive today, albeit in a very run down state or on the verge of demolition, eyed by rapacious property developers. The image above shows the music kiosk from Slanic Moldova in the Oriental Carpathian mountains, displaying a serene atmosphere just before the Great War, a time of prosperity and well being in this country at the dusk of the Victorian epoch.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

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If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Historic Houses Photo Collage

Valentin Mandache
Historic houses of Romania collage (©Valentin Mandache)

I composed the image above from 60 selected photographs taken during my fieldwork this year, mostly in Bucharest, but also Iasi (NE Romania) and Sinaia (the Transylvanian Alps). In my opinion the collage is extremely suggestive of the exuberant historic architecture found within the territory of Romania: a peculiar crossroad of Western, especially French, and Central European influences blended together on a Balkan background with old Ottoman echoes. I hope the pot-pourri of houses, decorations and ornaments, often painted in garish colours, would give you a more wholesome image of the vast field represented by Romania’s historic architecture. I also use a version of this collage for my Twitter page background, have a look here: http://twitter.com/historo

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

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If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Peacock Motif Neo-Romanian Style Window

Valentin Mandache
Peacock motif Neo-Romanian style window, late 1920s house in Eroilor area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The medieval peacock decorative motif, inspired from biblical stories, was used with predilection in both early medieval Byzantine and western Romanesque ecclesiastical architecture. The Eastern Christian lands of the Balkans that come under the rule of the Ottoman empire continued to use this type of decoration until modern times. That was more evident in the architecture of church and monastery assemblies from the area of the former principalities of Wallachia and Moldova, the core of modern Romania, which benefited from a higher degree of freedom and religious expression derived from their status as Ottoman protectorates at the frontier of the Sultan’s Caliphate with the enemy empires of Austria and Russia. The modern Neo-Romanian architectural style has borrowed the peacock motif in its decoration register, embodied in exquisitely beautiful houses built especially in the time interval between the end of the Great War and early 1930s. The window in the photograph above is just one such example, where the pair of peacocks on the pediment are presented feeding from a grape among grape leaves and vines, signifying the biblical Garden of Eden, and its modern correspondent in the abundance of that plant and wine industry in modern Romania. That message of plenty and luxuriant vegetation is also wonderfully emphasized in this photograph by the tree branches from the rich garden surrounding this Neo-Romanian style house.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Romantic Era Coat of Arms

Valentin Mandache
c19th coat of arms, Bucharest
Aristocratic coat of arms that belonged to Costache-Boldur family (info provided by Mr. Gabriel Badea Paun) placed within a Renaissance inspired panoply on the roof above the doorway of the family house, dated sometime in the first half of c19th, Regina Maria area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The modern nation building process in the Romanian lands started in the first half the c19th, a time of intense search for roots in the romantic ancient and medieval past. The Danubian Principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia), the core of future Romania, were for more than five centuries part of the Ottoman realm  and the recovery of a nearly forgotten European identity made that national soul searching even more poignant. Many among the upper classes, the aristocrats and merchants (the principalities did not have any industry at that time), began to proudly display through symbols or in crude western style architecture, in a city which in that period boasted mostly provincial Balkan Ottoman architectural styles, their supposed connections with the old grand families of Europe. Most of these were pure fiction, like the much touted supposed connection of the Romanian aristocracy with the medieval Venetian and Genovese nobility that in c13th and c14th set up trading towns in the area along the Danube and the Black Sea shore. Others were keen to emphasize equally dubious connections with the French or German aristocracy. That interesting period left traces in some of the city’s architectural decorations, especially in the coat of arms proudly displayed on roof panoply moldings placed above the doorways of the aristocratic and merchant houses. The image above shows such an interesting coat of arms from a now ruined house in the Regina Maria area, at that time located on the outskirts of old Bucharest. The finish is very crude and models a Renaissance style panoply, but nevertheless is very picturesque and conveys the atmosphere of a bygone era of incipient national consciousness among the grand families of this region of the Balkans.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.