Condemned To Noise
Newspapers have recently brought to us the information that Bucharest is one of the noisiest cities in Europe. When it comes to bad things, few people do a better job than us at reaching the superlative. As far as I am concerned, I did not need the press to identify the
Bucharest Seen From Abroad
Like most people living and working in Bucharest, I've often wondered what it would be like to live in any other European city, to actually be surrounded by civilized human beings and not to collect a ton of dust on your shoes and clothes after a day's trip to
“Kaviar House”
The theme of the provincial man leaving his small town, a closed universe deprived of any kind of perspective and diving into the unknown, attracted by the Big City where he thinks he'll hit it big and get rich overnight, was and continues to be a successful recipe
Who’s Left In Bucharest
The house painter. He has a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his appetite for work is equal to nothing. His torn t-shirt doesn't give you any clue on the fee he will demand at the end of the day after slothfully varnishing a wall which can neither resist nor
A Puzzled City
Bucharest is a city that is difficult to describe, and difficult is a term that tends to suggest the word impossible. Many of us have probably at least once in our lifetime been in the situation of talking about the city that we live in. And, just as probable, among the
The Construction Of Saint Joseph’s Cathedral
Red bricks are the distinctive feature of this construction, next to the white rosette, a huge round window above the main portal: thereby, the reader has most certainly recognized the Archbishopric of Saint Joseph's Cathedral. It is one of the landmark buildings in
Michel Bührer: Cannibal City
Michel Bührer: Bucharest A Cannibal City and White Billboards exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, 10-11 2008 Bucharest, a “Little Paris” of the ghettoThe exhibition of the Swiss Journalist Michel Bührer, Bucharest, a Cannibal City/White Billboards
I No Longer Love Bucharest
I no longer love Bucharest. I'm no longer hoping something can be done about this dump of Europe An interview with Mircea Cărtărescu by Ion Longin Popescu Slowly but surely, the old, historic Bucharest – the little that was left after Ceauşescu's demolishing
Neo-Western Supremacism
Born in Botosani (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1850, Mihai Eminescu is widely regarded as Romania's finest romantic writer, and is recognized as both Romania and Moldova's national poet. Most Romanians can recite line after line of his work, the
Nature And Architecture: The Parks And Gardens Of The Capital
Cismigiu gardens, Icoanei park, Kiseleff park (see also The green within in Gallery). Many of Bucharest’s gardens and parks, which no longer exist because of extensive urban reorganising, were shaped as the aristocracy tastefully redesigned the open space around their
Urban Memory: Museums Of The Romanian Capital
1st row: National History Museum, Old Court Museum, Archeology Museum (detail), National Museum of Art2nd row: Collections Museum, Zambaccian Museum, Theodor Aman Museum, Gh. Tattarescu Museum 3rd row: Storck Museum, Romanian Peasant Museum, Astronomical Observatory (detail),
The Past: Plus Quam Perfectum
Bucharest is a city in search of identity. Its precise moment of birth is unknown, for the Cetatea Dîmboviţei of the 14th and 15th centuries only played host to its rulers when they occasionally came to ward off threats from south of the Danube or Hungarian attacks form