Bucharest 3 - The World's Second Largest Building

Today we saw the world's second largest building (the Pentagon is the largest).   It's the Palace of Parliament, and was constructed (but not finished) under the regime of Ceausescu.  It was a shattering and confounding experience.    It's an appalling monument, created by a true megalomaniac tyrant, and a testimony to the extremes of fanaticism.  The building was conceived by Ceausescu as a moment to himself, conceived on the scale of a Versailles or Winter Palace.   It has 1,100 rooms, only 400 of which were ever finished.   It required 700 architects, and 20,000 laborers working in shifts 24 hours a day for many years.   It cost billions of dollars at a time when many Romanian people did not have enough to eat.  It's one thing to read about the French kings building their palaces and bankrupting their nation, and its another thing to conceive of a man doing the same thing with such absolute power in our current age.

The building from the outside is quite ugly, littered with ill-proportioned neoclassical elements.

This is the side view, the front is much longer:

Entrance is via guided tours only, and done with a security process and byzantine bureaucracy worthy of the building's totalitarian  origins.   But what is finally confounding as you go through the tour is the sheer opulence and jaw-dropping size of the rooms.  It really looks like a brand new (and larger) Versailles or Winter Palace.  And in fact there is clearly a great deal of craftsmanship that went in to creating these state rooms.  There are numerous enormous chandeliers, wood carvings, decorative plaster, grandiose marble stairways, etc.  It's all truly unbelievable, as if you had been transplanted to some strange movie set.   It's confounding because you are naturally awed by the place while at the same time appalled by its origins as the product of great tyranny.   Ceausescu really was crazy.  Our guide pointed out some ventilation spaces in the ceiling, and told us that Ceausescu refused to allow air conditioning to be installed because he was afraid it would be used to poison him.

Pictures cannot really convey the enormous size of the interior spaces.

 This is the ceiling of the concert hall.   There are enormous chandeliers everywhere in the building:

There are endless corridors, with state rooms that are mostly empty:

A ceiling:

A skylight:

Enough is enough!   You get the picture..

At the end, you are taken to the balcony overlooking the "grand boulevard" created by Ceausescu to lead up to his palace.   It's deliberately a few feet wider than the Champs Elysee.   This was created by destroying entire neighborhoods of older parts of Bucharest.

A few details of the exterior;

At the end, I half wanted to see it destroyed, because if you admire it, you are in fact doing what Ceausescu wanted to happen.   On the other hand, I also think the people that worked on it should be remembered, too.   In the meantime, the Romanian government is using part of the building for its parliament. Other parts are used as conference centers, and another part has been turned into a contemporary art museum.   And there are still 700 rooms, unused and unfinished!

Bucharest 2 - Art

Bucharest is not a world famous art museum destination, but we did spend a rewarding day in the Romanian National Gallery with our friends David and Sylvia, who are also here for the festival.  The museum is divided into two wings, one for Romanian art and one for European Art.   The Romanian one was by far the most interesting for me, especially for the collection of Medieval Art.   There were lots of icons.   (Romania's main religion is traditional Orthodox christianity, following the historical and geographical connection from Greece through to Russia.)   As usual, I was fascinated by the off the beaten path ways of representation, and the ways in which some of the art seemed to reflect a relationship with the traditional peasant designs.

Here are a few highlights and fragments:

This robe reminded me of expressionist woodcuts:

There were also tapestries:

And these astute students of a beautifully carved wooden iconostasis.  (Although their elbows give a good indication of what they are doing....

In fact, it appears that Vera dressed in geometric patterns to complement the icons

The collection also includes a large collection of Romanian painting from the 19th century to the mid 20th century.   While there are very few outstanding works, it's alway interesting to see how regional artists incorporate styles of painters from elsewhere.   So you see something that looks Matisse-like, etc.  

The major attraction for me was these three early paintings by Victor Brauner.   These paintings were actually hidden in Vera's basement for a period of time when the possession of such paintings would have been dangerous under the regime of the Communists.  Most of Brauner's works are found outside of Romania, as he left for Paris at an early age.

The European wing is mostly paintings that were in the collection of King Carol, with some excellent El Grecos and Rembrandts among them.

A detail of El Greco's brushwork:

And the occasionally oddity, like this trompe l'ceil frame;

The Museum is in the old Royal Palace, and parts have some interesting architectural details.

Bucharest 1

We flew from Vancouver to Bucharest.  Which is from the Pacific Northwest on the North American continent to the very Southeast corner of Europe.   Which is to say its a long flight! And a long distance both in physical terms and in cultural terms.   We came to Bucharest partially because we wanted to go to the Enescu Music Festival, which is probably Romania's biggest cultural event, a month long blizzard of classical music concerts of all kinds,   It was also Vera's xxth high school reunion.   Vera is from Bucharest, and I had been here once before, in 2002, when it was still in the transition period after the overthrow of the dictator Ceausescu.

Bucharest is a truly fascinating city.   While it's not on anyone's list of must-see touristic destinations, it is filled with interesting things to see.  The city itself has suffered from numerous degradations over the years, mostly from the totalitarian regime of Ceaucescu, whose narcissistic megalomania extended to the field urban planning.   So not only was he torturing and killing his citizens, but trying remake the city in his own vision of the "new socialist man".  But this was not a disciplined and organized process.   Apparently, in some cases, Ceausescu would be driven by a 17th century church, and immediately decree that it be demolished.  Many of Bucharest's historical buildings were thus destroyed, with whole historic neighborhoods being razed to make way for apartment blocks.   It's a wonder then, then, that anything survived.  This on top of bombings in World War 2, and severe earthquakes in 1940 and 1977.   But there are fascinating pockets of history that somehow seemed to have survived; one simply has to get used to the idea that a 17th century church can be nestled next to a decaying 1950's concrete housing block.    Speaking of decay, that is one of the perverse virtues of Bucharest, in that many buildings are in a state of decay, which in some ways is more interesting than in places where everything is pristine.   All of this is gradually changing, though, with Romania's membership in the European Union.  The place looks infinitely more prosperous that it did 15 years ago, and of course now you have all the outlets of contemporary global merchandising and eating.

There are a number of large institutional buildings (state, banks, etc.), mostly built in the late 1800's, built in an extravagant style which looks very Parisian.   There are also numerous orthodox churches, mostly small ones, that have somehow survived, some dating back to the 18th century.   My favorites,  though, are the numerous residential villas, dating from the late 19th century to the 1930's.   Many of these are extravagantly eclectic mashups of French, Transylvanian, Turkish, and who knows what other styles.   Some have been restored and some are in a state of decay.

Here are numerous examples:

In a state of decay:

And while walking around the area of these houses, something line this suddenly pops up, an unfinished relic from who knows when:

The old with the new:

This is the Slovak Embassy; they love blue!:

If you look hard enough, you can even find something interesting in the concrete tower blocks:

Vera has always thought our house in Vancouver was too cluttered with plants in the yard.   She now knows it could be worse:

There is actually a house under there; there was actually someone doing some work on a window from inside.