Staying in the heart of Bucharest, I have a sense of both the cultural strength of Romania and its contested history. It may be 25 years since the Revolution here, but there is still a struggle for the soul of this nation. Another demonstration is taking place today outside the Government Building in the Plata Victoriei, calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Yet the Old Town, Lipscani, continues to be chichi-fied and thronged with sybarites, much as the City of London continued about its business unbothered by the Occupy movement camped on the steps of St Pauls. Those who have grown up since Communism embrace the international litany and language without question, but my 42-year old Romanian friend bridles as they invariably ask him if he is paying the bill in “cash”, rather than using the Romanian numerar or bani.

He draws attention to the preponderance of Austro-Hungarian architecture in Bucharest, much of which predates Romanian independence, won after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. Despite a very mixed World War I, Romania came out of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference with vastly increased territories, making the so-called ‘Greater Romania’ which prospered between the wars. This gave rise to Bucharest’s golden era as the ‘Little Paris’ of Eastern Europe. It was a Parisian architect, Albert Galleron, who built two of Bucharest’s most magnificent buildings, the Central Bank of Romania and the Bucharest Athenaeum concert hall.

Albert Galleron – Atheneul Român project – Romanian Athenaeum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Second World War, two major earthquakes – in 1940 and 1977 – and an increasingly crazed dictator have all taken their toll on Bucharest’s buildings. It is suggested that Romania is still searching for a new architectural vernacular and I am not sure whether the National Theatre building is it, but its history reflects the slings and arrows of the culture it serves.

The original 1852 baroque theatre building, which formally became the National Theatre in 1875, was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1944. The current, 3-auditorium National Theatre was built in 1972, but it did not fit with a certain Nicolae Ceasescu’s triumphalist aesthetic, so he had its exterior re-clad with this concrete façade in the early 80s.

Now its current director has had the original, rather striking design reinstated.

In front of the building is this rather extraordinary group sculpture, representing characters from the plays of Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), for whom the theatre is now named.

Caragiale’s plays made fun of the politics and politicians of the time and of the Romanian society in general – ie my kind of man. His masterpiece, A Lost Letter (1884), features a provincial government election won by a blackmailer, so the resonance of good satire is not lost on the Bucharest bourgeoisie of today. They were turning out in their finery when I visited the theatre, but I decided a drama in a language I do not speak would not be a beneficial use of my time.

I went instead to a free concert band orchestra across the street, featuring a surprisingly good young tenor called Giorgio, singing such obscure classical favourites as “O sole mio”. This attracted a wonderfully catholic crowd, from parents and children to winos and young gay couples holding hands. I was sorry to be solo mio.

After that, I repaired to a Bucharest institution, Caru’ cu Bere, a kind of Romanian Brasserie Lipp set in the Musee de Cluny. It is half galleried food-hall, half church of kitchen kitsch.  The waiters are a generation younger, but the arrogant insouciance is similar, and the food is fine in the sense that that is the Romanian trad grub that you get, while they take the wine more seriously. I had a generous portion of some very happily stuffed peppers, and a very nice Feteasca Neagra, a grape peculiar to Romania. Then they put on the floor show, and you are suddenly in the middle of the local Strictly Come Dancing.

Romanian women are not afraid to sport their wares, which can be quite disconcerting. In this hot weather they can appear in startlingly revealing garb, often looking like a couple of boiled eggs got up in a frilly bandana. I imagine the intention is that this is goods for consumption but, if there is an accompanying tattooed muscle mountain, one has to be circumspect in the business of window shopping. Strolling the streets with a camera, you have to be particularly careful not to engage the ire of those who would rather not be photographed. Yet their plight is an integral part of the city’s story. My friend tells me that Romanians tend not to tip beggars, unlike us soft northern Europeans, on the grounds it only encourages them. Some, he says, make up to €1500 a day.

These guys don’t look too well off to me, but who knows what resides in those plastic bags. They were within a block of the National History Museum I visited today, which has some sensational treasures, including an exhibition of gold through Romania’s history, from Thracian jewellery and artefacts to 20th century royal bling. I particularly liked this 5th century helmet, apparently found by a farmer’s son just turned up in a field.

They have some lovely prehistoric anthropomorphic pots, which must be the origination of the term pot-bellied:

And truck-loads of Roman statuary and stonework:

The museum also has a Trajan’s column every bit as good as the one in Rome, except for the small detail that theirs has been disassembled and the bits are displayed around this gallery, like a nightmare version of an Ikea furnishing “flat packed for easy assembly”.

The essence of the Romanian identity crisis lies in plain sight – in the name: Roman. They were an important outpost of the Roman empire, their language to this day is closer to Latin than Italian, and theirs is a Romantic culture surrounded by Slavs.          The key signifier of Romanian architecture is the semi-circular Roman arch, as seen here at Romulania:

Recreated throughout Christendom as the Romanesque tradition of the 10th to 11th centuries, as in these arches in Segovia:

and replicated in Romanian churches everywhere:

My civil servant friend was married beneath this glorious ceiling of the Stavropoleos church in Bucharest.

I shall be returning to the centrality of churches in the Romanian world over the coming weeks, but the melding of God and Mammon most obvious in Bucharest also reminds me of the great sage of the Roman world who met his end here, Ovid, who had many fine epigrams I could draw upon. One suits me well:

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.

One man who has given up worrying once and for all was consumed by the process of building on a grandiose scale was Ceasescu, with a style reminiscent of the Third Reich’s architect, Albert Speer. Nicolae hadn’t finished his necropolis – the Palace of Parliament improbably named the House of the People – before he was overtaken by events. With 330,000 square metres and 3,100 rooms, this is apparently the second largest building in the world – after the Pentagon. At least this gargantuan folly was not intended to visit its peculiar practices on far-flung corners of the globe.