Bucharest


Bucharest is a different city to Vienna and Prague, though it is a little like Budapest.
So what is different?
It has some obvious influences from the south and east. Modern Turkey, the Ottomans, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Greeks vie with the Hapsburgs and the USSR/Local communists for influence on the city.
The city has only recent architecture (max 400 years) and most is actually only 50 years or less. It also has some very interesting building placements, juxtapositions, and ersatz period architecture.
I get the impression that it was both a merchant gateway ie not an affluent imperial city, and a location without much stone. Also it has had earthquakes, fires and invaders throughout its history, destroying the infrastructure.
The oldest buildings seem to be orthodox churches (tiny ones) built from brick not stone, and placed in really strange locations. 


We learnt the reason for this on our free walking tour of the city hosted by a twenty something local boy with excellent English and a flair for conspiracy. Firstly the churches were truly local so small and of cheaper brick construction. The communists abolished most religion but kept the one majority religion so that they could control it, infiltrate it and gain information. However they needed to subjugate religion to the state and so the placement of churches in prominent positions was problematic. Many were destroyed but some were moved and some were surrounded by larger buildings. One notable central church (top) was moved 8 metres from a corner position, rotated and then overshadowed by a new apartment building on the corner.
Another place of interest is on the edge of the old town. The photo shows a large park with grey apartment buildings and massive billboards. From a distance the appartments seem to be drab Stalin style complexes and we assumed that they and the park dated from the fifties or sixties. The billboards are immense and very modern.


It turns out that all of this is was the dream of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. It started with the demolition of the dwellings of 30,000 families in the 1980's and only finished after his execution in 1989. The apartments have no colour as this was a communist thing but they were actually elite apartments for party members. With the coming of capitalism in the 1990's they were sold off as is (as to change them would have been uneconomic)and the billboards appeared








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