Jun 212010
The works being done to Unirea Shopping Center allow us a to gaze on a rare sight 🙂 the facade of the building without the advertisement banners. The commercial center was built in 1977 and remodeled in 1986.
The works being done to Unirea Shopping Center allow us a to gaze on a rare sight 🙂 the facade of the building without the advertisement banners. The commercial center was built in 1977 and remodeled in 1986.
It should be said that on a part of the actual shopping centre’s site there used to exist Ca’al Cadosh Shalom Temple (built in 1883 on the former site of the Small Spanish Ca’al Cicu Temple of 1846, demolished in 1987). Actually Unirea Shopping Centre lies approximately in the place where the former Jewish Quarter used to begin, stretching to the South-East and East. The Great Synagogue, the Ahdut Hodesh Synagogue and the Choral Temple luckily survived in the same area, even though most of the old properties were demolished in 1986-1987 and Romanians managed to do a masterpiece of imbecility by completely fencing off heritage such as the Great Synagogue. As for Unirea Shopping Centre itself, the same story, nothing new: a bunch of tacky boutiques selling uninspired crap to the masses which know no better than that.
I was looking at the photo and did not know what seemed new and strangely familiar in the same time. The stark-naked building, of course, as I knew it in the 80’s. Not that I miss looking at the building per se, but aren’t those meshes horrendous!
Anyway, my question is: how did you manage to stop the traffic?! 🙂 Awesome! From what I see every year that intersection seems to be locked in a perpetual traffic jam… For me this view is similar with that long shot from Vanilla Sky in which Tom Cruise stands in the middle of a completely empty Times Square.
Lia: 🙂 I was lucky, it was Sunday afternoon on a summer day and I guess many people have deserted the city to go to the seaside or the mountains.
Right… The lingering Sunday afternoons with their smell of hot, melted asphalt… Yep, I remember those too – I used to love that smell!
I have to say that I’m very conflicted when I look at your pictures. I don’t particularly like Bucharest anymore (and with every visit I’m amazed how estranged I became from it) but I love how I see it through your lens. You make me look at the city with affectionate eyes again.
Thanks Lia, for being so nice.
I was getting ready to ask about the traffic – how unusual – and then I saw Lia’s question and your answer. Yap, I remember choosing the seaside for those hot Sunday afternoons.