Italia

Chronicles Of An Optimist

excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much

The Procrustean Bed

excerpt Bucharest is a city with bleak winters and decomposingly hot summers. The sewage system is primitive and complicated, because it follows twisted streets. Repair works, lasting forever, produce trenches, hindering the traffic. There is no room for relaxation, or refreshing.

Familiars Of The Old Royal Court

excerpt …sage citoyen du vaste univers. [1] La Fontaine With you I liked to live through, in the memory, my thirty years of voyages, with you, again, should you not feel bored, I shall live through, in the memory, my childhood and early youth. This will entail returning

Letters From Budapest

in Hungarian, Papirusz Book, Budapest, 1999 Budapest literary historian Martos Gabor (b. 1953), an expert in the Magyar literature written in Romania between 1970-1990, well-known in the Transylvanian cultural milieu, held a regular column in the Bucharest Hungarian cultural

Memory And Strolls

If you read travel notes by simple tourists or people on journalistic, cultural or political assignments, from the 1920s or 30s, if you peruse recurrent images about a Bucharest imprinted with evil or good charms, equally decrypted and encoded, moving and repulsive, you

Voyage To Southern Russia And Crimea, Through Hungary, Wallachia And Moldavia (Paris, 1837)

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

Bucharest Described By Sulzer At The End Of The 18th Century

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

Romanian Profile

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

At The Fair

Yellow and blue streetcars, princely coaches, churlish carts and bikes and a lot of folks on foot…From so many streets and ways, like on as many arms of a huge river waves upon waves of people are flowing as if into a boisterous sea, unto the barrier at the end of the

The Bucharest Of Former Times

Volume I, 1871 - 1884 The Christmas of 1871? My young age then was so eagerly waiting for it. By 10 o'clock the night of the Eve, the shrill voices of the carolers would resound all over Bucharest. In those days the carolers were children from the edge of town, children

Şuţu Palace

Director It was March 29, 1832 when the commissar of the Red District of Bucharest replied to Postelnic (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Costache Grigore Suţu with an approval to resume the works on the surrounding wall of the garden You have begun to raise. Symbolically

The Mogoşoaia Bridge

excerptsThe Beginnings With the passage of time the ancient road was called by sundry names: lane, bridge, promenade – as if it needed any name or title, this street of streets whose reign over the city goes back two hundred years. Victory Promenade! The Nation's