In the last few posts I briefly looked at Art Deco in Bucharest, but one of the most beautiful buildings in the city remains the Cantacuzino Palace that currently hosts the George Enescu National Museum.
The palace, featuring an elegantly sumptuous entrance in perfect Art Nouveau style, was built between 1901 and 1903 by Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino (once Mayor of Bucharest and head of the Conservative Party), also known as Nababul, following the plans of architect Ioan D. Berindei.
The interior decorations were commissioned to prominent artists of those times: George Demetrescu Mirea, Nicolae Vermont and Costin Petrescu did the paintings; architect Emil Wilhelm Becker worked on the sculptures and sculptural ornaments and the Parisian Krieger house created instead interior design elements such as tapestries, lamps, chandeliers and stained-glass windows.
One of the most iconic features of the palace is probably the shell-shaped roof on the entrance. In 1913 the palace was inherited by Cantacuzino's s son and his wife Maria (Maruca Rosetti-Tescanu). After the death of her husband, Maria married composer, violinist, pianist and conductor George Enescu (1881-1955).
The house was later on donated by Enescu's widow and turned into a national museum dedicated to the Romanian composer in 1956.
Inside you will find photographs and documents chronicling the life of George Enescu, from his childhood to his first musical compositions, concerts and successes, plus sheet music, manuscripts and drawings, Enescu's tailcoat and his costume as a Member of the Romanian Academy.
The museum is not extremely huge (just three rooms in fact), but music lovers will find quite a few interesting memorabilia and information about the composer.
Behind the palace you will instead find the memorial house where Enescu and his wife lived between 1945 and 1946, with three rooms furnished with the composer's personal objects. Since 2007 the Cantacuzino Palace also received the European Heritage Label.
This year it was also Enescu's 130th birth anniversary and Italy celebrated it a few months ago by dedicating him a stamp.
I'm embedding in this post two videos: one features a violin composition, the other one is instead a short extract from Enescu's lyric tragedy Oedipe (1936), one of his most famous works.
My research trip to Romania was made possible through a journalistic grant from the Institutul Cultural Român (ICR - Romanian Cultural Institute), Bucharest.
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