Theme Day: Big

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Sep 012009
 

Versiune în română

This is the first time I’m taking part in Theme Day of the City Daily Photo community. Theme Day is a monthly event that happens the first day of every month, when all participating blogs will post a picture that relates to the theme day’s description. Today’s theme is Big. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

I decided for a straighforward treatment of this theme and just photographed the biggest thing I could find in my city. I don’t know if you’ve heard but Bucharest holds the dubious record of having the biggest Parliament building in the world, which is also the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon. It truly is as big as a dictator’s ego. Bucharest’s Palace of Parliament was built during the Ceauşescu’s regime and it was designed as the seat of his political power. He also intended to use the building as his personal residence. Construction began in 1984 and at the time of Ceauşescu’s death in 1989 it was not completely finished. He never got to move in.

The Palace of Parliament was and still is a controversial building. Some people think of it as shameful, an architectural horror while others are proud of its records and consider it the biggest tourist attraction in Bucharest. I tend to side with those who don’t like the building, which in my eyes represents the peak of Ceausescu’s megalomania. Many old beautiful buildings were demolished to make way for this pointlessly massive “house” (Parliament’s Palace used to be called The House of the People during the communist regime). To quote wikipedia, “much of Bucharest’s historic district, including 19 Orthodox Christian churches, six Jewish synagogues, three Protestant churches (plus eight relocated churches), and 30,000 residences” were demolished to create the space necessary for this project. I remember a joke that was going around at the time: the boulevard that ends with the Parliament Palace was to be called “The Victory of Socialism”. The joke’s punchline was that in fact the name of the boulevard is “The Victory of Socialism against Bucharest”.

Unfortunatelly I read somewhere that this building is indeed the biggest tourist attraction in Bucharest. Seems like people like records of this sort. I visited the building once, when they opened it for public in 1990; I remember some huge rooms, the dimensions being so excessive that nothing else was noticeable. Today the building houses the Romanian Parliament, as well as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) opened in 2004 inside the west wing. It can be visited by guided tours.

The Old Town

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Aug 242009
 

Versiune în română

Bucharest’s Old Town, also called Lipscani area or Historical Centre, is what was left after the former communist dictator Ceausescu finished the work done by the allied bombings of 1944. And what’s left – around 300 historical houses, a few churches and the remains of the old palace and court of Vlad Ţepeş (1459-1462) – is unfortunatelly for the most part managed by Bucharest’s City Hall which has spent years delaying the most needed restorations. Old Town was Bucharest’s merchant area starting with the middle of the 17th century until the middle of the 20th century when the owners were arrested by the communists and the houses were taken over by the Gypsies. The Gypsies didn’t take good care of the buildings so the houses slowly degraded. Nowadays some of the owners or their heirs came back to reclaim the properties but some are still disputed and degrading still. Some of the buildings have been restored and are now functioning as restaurants, cafes or shops as on Smârdan Street. Finally, in 2006 the City Hall chose a Spanish company to start rebuilding the infrastructure in the Historical Center but early this year the project was stopped due to a quarrel between the City Hall and the contractor. A few streets are already restored but most of them are pretty difficult to walk as they were dug up for the planned street repairs. I’ve heard many people say that this area has great potential and it could transform into something unique in Europe. It seems like the City Hall achieved this already. It is indeed unique to walk along rudimentary wooden planks in the center of an European capital.

Colors

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Aug 162009
 

Versiune în română

Bucharest is not a city of bright colors, most of its buildings are somber affairs in different shades of grey, white or at most a pale yellow. But it seems like this building in June 11 Square is trying to remedy the situation. With its crazy colors and unusual architecture it looks like an alien has landed in the square. I was curious to find out more details, who built it, the name of the architect etc. but the buildings looks like it’s still in construction and nobody was around that could shed some light for me.

Controversial architecture

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Aug 142009
 

Versiune în română

A bit off the Revolution Square, on the corner of Dem Dobrescu Street, lies one of the weirdest looking buildings in Bucharest. It’s the former Directia V Securitate building (Securitate was the secret police of communist Romania, the equivalent of KGB in Russia or Stasi in East Germany) and the current headquarters of the Romanian Architects’ Association. The lower part of the building are the remnant walls of the house (cca. 1890) which housed the secret police and was destroyed during the Romanian anti-communist Revolution of 1989. In 2003 the Romanian Architects’ Association built a modern building inside and on top of these ruins, the project being designed by architects Zeno Bogdănescu and Dan Marin. The building, like any solution of this type, created controversy and searching the web I found many forums where it was called “hideos”, “ugly” etc and people were saying that no wonder Bucharest is the arhitectural hodgepodge that it is, since its architects have chosen to have their headquarters in a buidling like this. But I think this attitude is a bit unfair. I mean, what was the alternative? The building was severely damaged and at the price of real estate in downtown Bucharest, the building shell would have been demolished and replaced with a glass structure like the upper part of this building. But in this way the history was preserved and it makes people wonder about the building’s past. Even though I can’t bring myself to say that I absolutely like it, I would have to admit that it’s an innovative solution.

Victory Road at night – Part 2

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Aug 132009
 

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I guess it is time for another postcard picture. This is the former Royal Palace located along Victory Road, in the northwestern corner of the Revolution Square. It was first built around 1815 by prince Dinicu Golescu and it underwent changes over several decades. The building was remodeled in 1882-1885 after plans by the French architect Paul Gottereau only to be rebuilt in 1930-1938 after being damaged in a fire in 1926. Starting with 1948 the palace houses the National Art Museum and it displays an extensive collection of Romanian and European art dating from the 15th to the 20th century. The building was damaged during the events of December 1989 and was closed for repairs for several years.

Victory Road at night

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Aug 102009
 

Versiune în română

Friday evening I took a stroll along Victory Road (Calea Victoriei in Romanian) and admired some of the lit buildings along the way. And of course, my camera being always with me since I started this project, I took pictures. This photo shows the art deco building of the Telephone Palace to the left and the Novotel hotel on the right. The hotel, a cube made of glass looking like the standard business hotel has one thing that sets it apart: its entrance. Although it seems weirdly stuck to the glass structure behind it, the entrance reconstructs that of the old National Theatre which was destroyed during a WWII bombardment in August 1944. I think choosing this entrance was an interesting idea, celebrating a connection to the city’s past.

Give a leu …

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Aug 082009
 

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A group of tourists is listening to their guide in front of one of Bucharest’s most beautiful buildings: the Romanian Athenaeum. This concert hall was built in 1888 in neoclassical style after a design by the French architect Albert Galleron. The project was conceived by the diplomat Constantin Exarcu and a portion of the money for the completion of the building were gathered in a public collection in which people were asked to “give a leu for the Athenaeum” (The “leu” being the currency of Romania). With its 40 m high dome and the eight Ionic columns it resembles an ancient temple. The Athenaeum is the place to hear classical music in Bucharest. The resident orchestra is George Enescu Philarmonic.

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