We spend two days in Bucharest visiting with family and friends and also doing some sightseeing on the side. This time we stay at a AirBnB in the central area of Bucharest and hope this will give us the impetus to visit it a bit as previously we barely visited it. But first it is time for breakfast from the snack stand in our building, a benefit of staying centrally.
The buildings itself while nice inside doesn’t have the most beautiful facade and the interior courtyard is quite bleak also. We can see a few windows from which pigeons appear so it seems like not all apartments are lived in, pigeons excluded.
The view from the AirBnB small balcony is also an exercise in contrasts. In front is the Military Circle, beautifully restored but to the side is a high rise that seems to have gone through a few wars really.
On one day we visit one of the boulevards that start near the AirBnB and goes to Cismigiu Park, one of the famous downtown parks. The buildings here are not that well renovated, quite a contrast to Cluj or Sibiu really.
The buildings are quite impressive though, you can see they are quite detailed and would look quite beautiful if fully restored.
Cismigiu Park has changed quite a bit since we last visited it. It looks less like a premier park, there is no water in any of the water features and in general it looks left behind by any type of maintenance.
There are still some birds in the park, pigeons of course but also a wood pigeon and other birds. The flowers are still maintained at least in some areas but the park is a shadow of its former self or at least how we remember it.
We exit from the park near the Palace Hall, parking is quite difficult in the downtown area which makes the sidewalks a haven for cars that want to park semi-legally. This makes walking challenging sometimes and there are multiple ways the city has tried to stop this from happening, unfortunately one isn’t to create more parking spaces.
We return towards our AirBnB on Victory Way which is the street on which it actually is located. It is also one of the major streets in Bucharest with some beautiful buildings on both sides.
It also has a famous confectionary, Capsa, where many artists, writers and other intellectuals were eating historically and we enter to explore the choices. As we already have our eating program planned, being with relatives, we don’t buy anything but still put this on our mental list to try next time.
Our relatives stay in the suburbs and of course we are visiting them during the day. Here there are lots and lots of highrises, quite similar to each other so every one that is more colorful attracts our attention, they can be quite cool even though mostly they are painted in advertising.
In the evening it is time to meet with our friends near our AirBnB. We walk the pedestrian area of the city for a while entering bookstores and searching for a restaurant to spend the night.
We find one which is quite loud and huge but has reasonably good food and we sit for some time exchanging stories and memories before returning home.
We start the second day by throwing out the thrash, in this case it is in a weird place and you have to go round the whole building near a flower shop to find a secret entrance to the thrash cans…really complex.
In the morning we explore again the downtown area near the AirBnB where we went the previous night. There is less traffic in the morning but we wanted to explore a few shops and the bookstores again and maybe buy some souvenirs.
The buildings in this area are relatively well maintained and quite imposing. When not shopping we are always with the heads up looking for some interesting detail on the buildings we pass.
The Romanian National Bank is a building I remember from previous wanderings in the area, it is as imposing as I remember it from years past when I was exploring the area.
This was the major financial district, and is still anchored by the Central Bank and you can see this by the number of old bank buildings in the area. And between all the banks is a small but beautiful church probably where all the bankers prayed for their investments success….
Probably the most impressive bank building is the Palace of the Deposits and Consignments (CEC). Even during communist times CEC continued to exist and offer CDs or the chance to win a car. We know quite a few people that got their first car this way.
One of the things we haven’t investigated prior while in Bucharest are the passages. There are a surprisingly large number of them and some of them are quite interesting to explore. Lots of stores and lots of restaurants are hidden here but most are not open yet this morning unfortunately.
We walk towards the National Art Museum our next destination for the day with our relatives as we really want to see it and we didn’t visit it for decades. We pass the palace from which the former communist dictator, Ceausescu, held his last gathering. The people started shouting and attacking the palace so he flew with a helicopter from the top of the building directly to his doom.
The Art Museum is located in the former Royal Palace so it is the central area of the city. We pass by Kretzulescu Church which somehow surprisingly survived the communist destruction of the downtown area.
The whole area is quite interesting and we haven’t here been on foot for some time so we spend a bit just enjoying our surroundings. This is helped by the very long stop lights in the area, probably we spend like five minutes waiting and it feels like hours.
We arrive at the former Royal Palace and have to find the ticket office where we are offered a choice. There are three sections and you can get individual tickets or visit only one section or you can get a combined ticket. We do the combined ticket of course as we want to see as much as possible.
The first section is foreign painters and it starts with the old painters, which are mostly religious paintings. You can feel you are in a royal palace as the stairs are quite large as we move from floor to floor and we feel quite royal doing it..
The collection is quite good and there are lots of paintings and soon we discover that maybe, just maybe, we should have done only one section today.
As we enter into more recent epochs the paintings become more interesting and we enjoy the Flemish and Impressionist schools especially, those paintings can be quite beautiful.
There are few people only in the galleries with only the guards being visible most of the time. Luckily we can take photos so we do just that, lots and lots of them as pass through the royal halls.
We descend on a different set of stairs and enjoy the many interesting detail in the palace and then we are done with this section. A bit harried but we still have time for the other two sections for which we need to exit and re-enter via a different entrance.
The next section is the one that is most interesting to us as it is relatively new and we don’t think it was open whenever we visited before. It is more Historical Museum than Art Museum as it covers a renovated part of the Royal Palace and the most important halls and rooms. The entrance is appropriately amrked with the emblem and motto of the Kingdom of Romania Nihil Sine Deo (Nothing without God). Upon entering we are directed to a room right next to the entrance, the Royal Dining Room. We are the only people inside and we enjoy exploring it, it seems it is still used for official balls.
then it is time to climb on The Voievod Stairs (Stairs of the Kings), the most impressive stairs in the palace as they are leading to the Throne Room. There is also a big painting on the ceiling with the most famous rulers of Romania, interestingly even now they are not sure who a few of them are :).
The Throne Room is large… really large and imposing. Likely it feels so big as there is no furniture, even the throne which we initially assume is actual is in fact just painted on the wall. But it takes a while to even notice that as it takes minutes to cross the hall, not really an exaggeration. The painting on the ceiling looks actually historical and it has an interesting informative panel below it regarding who each person is that is represented in it.
Looking backwards towards the door we almost decide to give up on returning…sooo far away. The king definitely needed to have good eyes to see who is arriving and who is in court every day, though likely he was just sending servants to find out.
Interestingly there is a smaller room on the side with a small exhibit about the the Romanian Kings and Queens. The highlight is the First King’s of Romania crown made out of steel from a cannonball fired during the Independence War.
The last section of the Art Museum is the Romanian Art section. It starts as expected with religious art which was THE art during the medieval ages. There are lots of bibles painstakingly written line by line with colorful images on the side.
Icons and religious paintings are also quite common in this section, some are actual and some are copies of paintings still found in monasteries and churches across Romania.
There are quite a few rooms dedicated to religious objects, at some point we really assume that the whole Romanian art section is just religious art and we missed somehow the laic art in another part of the museum.
There are quite a few altars, doors and icons and we wonder why for a while before understanding that all of these are saved from churches that were destroyed during the communist times.
In fact an entire room is dedicated to a single monastery near Bucharest that was leveled and this is all that was saved, a bit sad but not a lot that can be done now.
And then we reach the modern Romanian art section, it really is here so the whole wing is much bigger than we expected. Here are the most famous Romanian painters and paintings and we can see some paintings that previously we saw only in textbooks, stamps or on TV.
We spend quite some time in this section, and how could we not if there are paintings of pigeons? And flowers and cows and other animals but..we…like…pigeons.
Luchian is one of the most famous Romanian painters if not the most famous and there is an entire wall dedicated to his paintings. Nearby is the Romanian Impressionist area with some unexpectedly beautiful artwork.
Getting even more modern we get to Brancusi. While Romania claims him as a Romanian sculptor he did most of his work in France and therefore few sculptures are in Romania. Still it is enough to fill a room but for certain it is not the most impressive work of his that we have seen.
We exit a bit dazed after many hours in the museum and walk around a bit more to recover before spending the evening with relatives. And then it is time to back and in the morning we leave for Phoenix. Luckily no issues ensue this time and we arrive safely home after a very eventful and beautiful trip.
