Once a glamorous residential area, Bucharest’s old historical city centre (Centrul Vechi or Istoric), can be a very fascinating place from an architectural point of view.
The local government may have been trying to turn the heart of Bucharest into an upscale neighbourhood, but this jumble of streets around the corner from Calea Victoriei, one of the main avenues of the city, remains a stratification of old and decaying buildings and regenerated spaces.
So, while at night the place turns into a lively entertainment district, walking around its cobbled streets on a quiet early morning will reveal it as a work-in-progress space with quite a few abandoned and derelict corners.
It is indeed very easy to find a decayed building next to a fashionable cafe, bar, pub or antique shop, and a store of a trendy brand next to an abandoned house or a tacky looking shop.
The contrast is absolutely striking, in fact it would be correct to say that at times it's almost shocking.
Indeed walking around these streets at different times of the day will definitely transmit different feelings.
The Teatrul de pe Lipscani may be renovated and offering dance and theatre shows, yet next door to it there is a tangible sense of decay.
Bucharest was founded around the 1300s and at the time of the first reign of Vlad Ţepeş (1459-1462) in the area currently defined as "Old Town" there was a palace and a court (Palatul Curtea Veche).
Originally traders of Romanian, Austrian, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Armenian and Jewish origins opened their shops in this part of the city, turning it into a merchant district.
The area took the name of Lipscani, a term that came from the German merchants who came to sell their fabrics from "Lipsca", that is Leiptzig.
Other streets surrounding the city centre took instead the names of other craft communities and guilds: Blanari (furriers), Covaci (blacksmiths), Gabroveni (knife makers) and Cavafii Vechii (shoe-makers).
Different nationalities and guilds settled in the city centre and the architectural styles - including Baroque, Neoclassical and Art Nouveau - perfectly reflected this mix of cultures.
Until the end of World War II the area remained a merchant district. Then a new stage in the history of the district began as many house and business owners in these streets were arrested by the communist authorities.
In some cases the properties were confiscated, in others they were left to rot and, as the decades passed, the area became more and more neglected.
Roma gypsies eventually squatted in some of the empty buildings.These occupations were often illegal and triggered forced evictions and short notice relocations, followed in recent years by the requests of humanitarian associations (appealing to the civil rights included in European treaties) to stop the evictions, revise the housing law and grant adequate social housing.
Among the best touristic places around the area there are the Russian orthodox church of St. Nicholas with its onion-shaped domes and the Stavropoleos Monastery.
The Monastery (visited in a previous post) is located near the historic beer hall and restaurant Caru cu Bere, that, dating from 1875, is definitely the best restaurant in town.
Just around the corner from the restaurant you will instead find the headquarters of CEC, the national savings bank, and the National History Museum.
Pasajul Macca-Vilacrosse, Bucharest’s first shopping mall (named after the Catalan architect, Xavier Villacrosse, chief architect of Bucharest between 1840 and 1850, and Mihalache Macca, son-in-law of the building’s architect, Felix Xenopol) is also around the corner. Built in 1891 this arcade covered with a yellow glass roof leads from Calea Victoriei to the Old Town.
As stated at the beginning of this post, while this area is extremely facinating for its history and mix of architectures, the issues surrounding the Roma people living here still generate a state of inner conflict and confusion and at times you wish there was a genius such as Genndy Tartakovsky's Dexter (as spotted in one of the graffiti on the walls of a building in the Old Town...) to sort it out.
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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