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New Buildings And Old Facades In Bucharest

1 2 1. Hotel on Victoria Road. The remake of the former National Theatre façade kept this operation away from the attacks against the tall buildings from the historic center. 2. The replacement of the old buildings from Lipscani area. The pseudo-classical pediment and

The “Black Hole” Historical Center

from left: Old Court ruins, Manuc's Inn, Lime-Tree Inn galleries, passageway on Lipscani St. The other day I was wandering through the Historical Center of Bucharest, the capital city, that is, the place from where the sun rises for all of us Romanians. The name –

Stop And Show Me Something Green!

I used to play this game when I was a child, I played it so often that, from one day to the next, I always remembered to keep some leaves of grass, small leaves or even an entire plant, root and all, in my pockets, socks or sleeves. Little children played it too, later on.

In A City Which Used To Be European

Well, then, Dilema Veche intends to host a series of comments on the state of the city in which we live, to which some of us are bound, by birth, others by a life experience that is getting longer and longer, and which we want to defend against the aggressive attempts to

“I Think We Are Committing Suicide”

New police station on L. Catargiu St. and Architects' Order on A. Verona St. An interview by Eugen Istodor with Şerban Sturdza, Chairman of the Order of Architects Lesson: how we can bend the lawReporter: I would like to start from a very concrete thing: we are at

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

Blizzard In Bucharest

a fragment from The Blind, Chapter Two of Corpuri de iluminat/ Dark Bodies Through Sfântul Ştefan, beyond the old Height and over the tramline in Bărăţiei, a phanariot and decayed Bucharest drained under the snow; a balcony fallen onto its side reminds you that once,

Bucharest – Little Summit In Paris

I hadn't wanted to leave Bucharest during the NATO summit (2-4 April, 2008). Why should I have left? I'd have left after and not before it. To me Bucharest seems to be now exactly how it should be all the time. Less traffic in the center, more traffic on the outskirts

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

Bughettorest

Just another day in Bucharest, in the year 2006, in summer. My friend, an architect, who accompanies me on my visit to a “bedroom suburb”, feels shivers down his spine. Maybe it is because he doesn’t like “the poetry of concrete”. Or maybe he has a problem with

Horizontal Archeology

They used to call it little Paris for its French-style buildings and atmosphere. But now Bucharest looks like a little globalization of various epochs. The trouble is that you do not have to dig vertically for those epochs like archeologists, because builders have amassed

Mitica Is Dead

Revolution Square Last time when Bucharest was flooded, when in some districts the water rose as high as half of the Dacia car parked on the sidewalk, none of the Romanian reporters or newscasters failed to draw a comparison between our capital and a “European” one.