PLURAL MAGAZINE

Excerpts In Bucharest, this movement of life and health is even more visible than in the countryside; building is going on everywhere; everywhere old houses are being replaced by new ones. The same holds true for Jassy, and I was not surprised; capitals are always one or

excerpts Chapter III: BUCHAREST-WALLACHIA (…) My advice to the fatigued traveler who arrives in Bucharest is to pay his first visit to the excellent Turkish baths which we were to try ourselves soon. These establishments, mostly situated in the quarter by the Dâmboviţa

Among the foreign writers who passed through or stayed in Bucharest and who, on this occasion, wrote their impressions, is Franz Joseph Sulzer. He was from German Switzerland; he joined the Austrian army and due to his achievements became a captain. In 1776, Sulzer was invited

excerpts In the first half of the XVIIth century, there appeared a new combination of imported styles which has been characterized as the first Wallachian manifestation. The prototype of this style is the village church of Gherghiţa in Prahova county. A later example of

When I was a child, and later, as a teenager, I circled around the Romanian Athenaeum without knowing what the edifice was good for. Then I began to think that it had been built for George Enescu… And when I first entered the concert hall, climbing one of its spiral staircases,

The Cries of BucharestCities have their own special humming. Church bells, tram noises, horses, sergeants' whistles, car horns (banned in Bucharest), dogs barking, army trumpets, and so on, and so on – all combined, heard from a distance, forming a characteristic

There existed in cultural Bucharest between the world wars a sort of upside-down provincialism that believed only in the City of Light: What's new in Paris? There was always something new to talk about, even if, in some cases, the new from Paris had been seen around

excerpts Across Lina's, a stout house, laid awry, nurtured a small garden with a row of sweet basil; on the corner of the street a new house shot up on six floors: a tall slim slice with only one façade that showed the other two sides of coarse blind paint, waiting

The 24th of May, 1908 was a memorable day for Bucharesters. At 11 a. m. , the harmonious building of the ZoologyMuseum was inaugurated with great pomp. Erected at one end of Kiseleff Avenue, a fashionable promenade, in only one year (1904-1905), on the initiative and under

Chic, bon ton, fashion, good manners are undoubtedly law-like psycho-social categories. The 1900 society man had to abide by an incredible host of gospel-truths written down in the code of manners: assiduous frequentation of dancing parties, fencing and gentlemen's

Ever since the mid-18th century, the city off the Dâmboviţa banks has enjoyed a particular sentimental popularity, not only from the point of view of its merry, party-loving, enterprising inhabitants, but also in the memory of tourists, who christened Romania's Capital

excerpts In the large house of the Barbus, in the Mogoşoaia Bridge Street, the main staircase was guarded by two bronze moors, carrying huge, crystal lamps. Upstairs, you climbed to the boyar's dwelling. Under the first steps, however, a narrow door opened toward the