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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.
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