A Brand New Sunny Day in Bucharest (with Romanian Art)

What is Kemal Ataturk doing in front of Bucharest's Odeon Theatre?
Ain't nobody's business but the Turks.

Yes, that is a bust of Kemal Ataturk right there in Central Bucharest, in front of the Odeon Theatre. (Get ready for the segue.) That's just one of the many surprises you will find walking along Calea Victoriei in Central Bucharest.

And let's start at Piata Universatitii at the north end of Old Town. Nice view of the (possibly) unvisitable Russian Orthodox Church,

The Old Town is like the French Quarter, Pedestrian-friendly narrow streets packed with restaurants, bars, and party goers. Open all night. Minus the smell of urine and vomit. And with afforable prices. Non-outrageous humidity. OK. Old Town is nothing like the French Quarter,

The area north of Old Town, which, perhaps, has a name, also has plenty of beautiful architecture. Although way too much of it is under wraps and undergoing much-needed renovation. Such as the National Military Circle above.

But not the Hotel Capitol, with its fin de siecle "Flatiron Building" style elegance. Some buildings have been thoroughly modernized using some elements from their previous "Paris of the East" incarnations. Sometimes, as with this Novotel Hotel using a facade from the prior era, it works beautifully.

And sometimes it's a hideous monstrosity:

Office building. One single office building. Not an optical illusion of two buildings in one shot.

They took a beautiful historic building. And dropped an ugly, slightly larger, post-modern glass box on the roof. This is, in all seriousness, one of the ugliest, most hideous, office buildings I've ever seen anywhere, It's the Romanian office of the international business consulting firm the McKinsey group. Would you hire them to do something as basic as buy copy paper if you saw they were in building this grotesque? Architecture fail. Major fail.

Sometimes architects should never be trusted with something as important as architecture.

So let's look at some of the beautiful building along Calea Victoriei (translation: Victory Street). To cleanse the palate.

Here's another beautiful hotel. The Grand Hotel Continental.

This part of the city is more commercial, more practical, and more upscale, than the Old Town.

And given that we are in the upscale part of town, the concert hall, the Romanian Athenaeum, The venue for concerts of upscale music.

And photo spots for upscale people.

And for bridal photography:

I love getting pictures of bridal couples getting bridal photos taken at the tourist spots I inhabit.

Finally, we arrive at Piața Revoluției. Revolution Plaza.

With my camera eye, I spy a beautiful old Orthodox Church:

Symbolic statuary:

Or is it shambolic? I can't tell. Anyway, the centerpiece of Piața Revoluției is this piece of postmodern sculpture:

Yes, there is a wall of names of those who died in the 1989 revolution:

Remember. Romania was the only place where when they overthrew the communists, the communist dictator (and his even-more-hated-than-him wife) (Hillary Rodham Ceaușescu) (I kid I kid. The hated wife and deputy prime minister, and co-corpse of her husband Nicolae was Elena Ceaușescu)

Unfortunately, I look at that "Rebirth Memorial" and it reminded me of this:

The World's Largest Pecan. Seguin, Texas. Only this memorial has the Seguin Pecan up in the air on a skewer.

No disrespect meant for those who died ending communism in Romania. Well, except for Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. Complete disrespect was most definitely intended in those two instances.

Moving on to a Romanian leader more worthy of respect. Once we cross the street.

King Carol:

When Romania kicked out the Ottoman Turks in the late 19th Century, when the Ottomans were well into their "Sick Man of Europe" phase, the Romanians went shopping for a king. They hired a German prince named Charles and installed him on the Romanian throne as King Carol I.

He's on horseback looking across Calea Victoriei, Victory Street, at his palace.

The palace has been re-purposed to be the National Museum of Romanian Art.

Don't go in that entrance!

That's the entrance for "European" art.

You can see King Carol in the background of this piece of garden sculpture.

This naked man would rather hurl boulders than mow the lawn.  Anyway, use this entrance for Romanian art.

Most of the collection is religious art, since that's all there was for awhile. These are fragments of a fresco of the last supper from a destroyed church somewhere elsewhere in Romania:

What I like about this is look on Christ's face.

He looks P.O.-ed. Well, wouldn't you be? Knowing what was going to be happening in the next 24 hours because a so-called "friend" turned out to be no friend at all.

Beautiful church doors:

And a scene of Jesus looking rather "Our Lady of Guadalupe" in this one:

An altar piece I presume:

I presume this depicts the scene in the gospel where Jesus is relaxed, even napping, in the fishing boat when it is getting overwhelmed with water and Peter has a major panic attack.

This one is a weird one:

It's an angel during the battle between Heaven and Hell, when Satan and the Fallen Angels are being kicked out of heaven. This would have been done several hundred years ago. So why is the archangel wearing white go-go boots?

I liked this one for the expression on the horse's face as the Romanian is about to decapitate an Ottoman Turk:

The expression is priceless. It's like that scene in a bunch of movies where you hear a record scratch, the film stops, and the narrator -- in this case, the horse -- says something along the lines of "you may be wondering how I got to ...". The horse really looks to be contemplating his life choices here.

Anyway, late 19th Century, in Romania, like everywhere else, religion and war as art subjects are out. Sexy was in.

George Demetrescu Mirea "Bacanta."

Romanian art is not French art. And the Muzeul Național de Artă al României is not the Louvre. Get over it. Now we reach the modern and post-modern:

Ionesco was Romanian.

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This final one is called the "Weasel Trainer."

The artist is Dimitrie Varbanescu. I'm sure he didn't mean it, but the title made me snicker. Doesn't "weasel trainer" sound like a slang term for something unmentionable? I can imagine college buddies saying something like "He was in the bathroom for like 20 minutes. Training the weasel." I am so sorry for going there. Fortunately, if you are of proper mind and a good heart, you have no clue as to what allusions I just made.

The end.

Walking Tour of Bucharest

Biserica Sfantul Anton. As seen on my walking tour

I like to take the free walking tour whenever I visit a European city. It combines two things I like:  (1) an overview and understanding of the history and architecture of the city I am visiting, and (2) it's free.

But, first, a walk to the walk.

This is Statuia Lupoaicei.  Two babies suckling on a wolf mama. This seems like a reference to the legend of Romolus and Remus and the founding of Rome. Maybe it is.  Maybe Bucharest has its own variation on the theme. It's not like Rome has a copyright on the story. And even if they did, the intellectual property rights would have expired back when Romania was called Dacia.

Selfie!  The only one on today's tour.

The tour was to meet at the clock at Piata Unirii.  Piata = Plaza. Unirii = I don't know what. Anyway this is the clock.

Some workers were working on the fountain at Piata Unirii. Lots of construction -- or more like lots or repair -- going on in Bucharest. If you wanted a phrase to sum up Bucharest it would be "decaying beauty," like a lot of old Caribbean and Latin cities.

The infamous "Palace of Parliament" is visible in the center background shot here. It is the second largest office building in the world, after the Pentagon. It was built by Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. He destroyed dozens of blocks of historic architecture that made Bucharest "The Paris of the East." Yes, they called it that. I'm not making that up.  Paris. Of the East.

More Nicolae Ceaușescu urban renewal. The church sandwiched in between the ugliness was moved -- on rails -- a technique invented in Romania and now used elsewhere -- when Ceaușescu declared an ugly Soviet style apartment building must go right there. And so it did. Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect who was the intellectual force behind the urban renewal binge that destroyed many historic and beautiful cities in the United States and Europe in the 20th Century, would be so proud.

But Ceaușescu did not get this church. The aforementioned Biserica Sfântul Anton.

The building below is now a Romanian cuisine restaurant, Hanu' lui Manuc.

 

It's the site of where Moldava was cut from Romania and given by the Ottomans to Mother Russia.

I don't know if you can still reserve that table, in case you're ever in the mood to cleave Moldava from Romania.

Catblogging:

See the cat leap from the outdoor prayer wall. I don't think it's a metaphor.

Yet another beautiful church. And, below, yet another street cat:

There are a lot of street cats in Bucharest. They must not have any coyotes.

Another view of another Orthodox church. Don't ask me to name them all. The ones I've correctly named so far are accurate. I believe. But it you press me to name more, then I'll make names up.

Now here's a picture that tells a story.  It tells the story with the big red dot:

The big red dot means the building is in severe danger of collapse in the event of an earthquake. Bucharest is earthquake country. Why the red dot?  Why not just condemn it and tear it down? You can live in a building with one of these "unsafe in the event of earthquake" buildings, but you cannot operate a commercial enterprise within it! Priorities! Apparently, according to the tour guide, these are popular Airbnb rentals.

The church above?  I don't know its name.  The church below? Biserica Mănăstirii Stavropoleos.

Yes. Really.

Here is our tour guide explaining that, even though the architecture looks Moorish (at least to my amateur eye), it's actually traditional Romanian. Probably Moorish that entered Romania through the Ottomans.

Or maybe it's just plain Arabesque directly from the Ottomans. Beautiful interior that my little camera cannot capture all that well.

Dome.

It is Ottoman after all. Or traditional Romanian.

This is a Russian Orthodox church. All the other churches thus far have been Romanian Orthodox.

Orthodox Christianity is much more decentralized than Roman Catholicism. Which you would think would appeal to small government conservative me. But, no, I like my big huge "one size fits all" bureaucratic Christianity ruling over the Christian globe from the Roman Vatican.

The statue above is Michael, who first united Romania minutes before the Ottoman conquest. Oh and we learned that Vlad the Impaler (a.k.a. Dracula) did not impale his victims (almost always Ottomans) through the chest. Think lower. Think lower to a place you don't want to think about. Yup. Impaled them there then planted the stick upright and let gravity do the Turk killing. I don't have pictures of that.

But this is where the walking tour ended. Piata Universitatii. Where the Romanian revolution of 1989 began. The only overthrow of an Eastern European communist dictatorship that resulted in the death of the communist dictator, who, in this case, was Ceaușescu.