THE HISTORY OF BUCHAREST - THE URANUS DISTRICT, DEALUL SPIRII
Bucharest, whose foundation is related either to the legend of Bucur the shepard, who set up a settlement on the bank of the Dâmboviţa river, or to Negru Vodă voivode, who set up the ground to a residence and an exchange centre – it is set on a place with a significant historical value (archaeological discoveries attest an age of the human settlements of over 150,000 years: Fundeni, Dudeşti, Pipera, Dealul Spirii and the Mihai-Vodă monastery – the latter was found in the vicinity of the Palace of Parliament).
Grand Hotel Continental
Bucharest, as other European capitals, was established on the banks of a river, named Dâmboviţa, which caused serious floods for hundreds of years. In 1862, ”the water rose so high, that it reached the higher floor of the houses, and people got out of the houses through the windows”. The birthplace of Cetatea de scaun a Ţării Româneşti, as the city was called in the past, is the Palace and the Old Court1, situated near Hanul lui Manuc2, not far from the place where the Palace of Parliament is located now.
Palace of Parliament
Bucharest image, until the transformation into ”Little Paris”, as appeared in old panoramic photos, can be summed up as follows: ”a green wide space, from which only church towers rose as vertical forms” or a city with ”tight and sinuous alleys, with those famous roads boarded with wooden beams.
The Romanian Athenaeum is one of the largest architectural jewels of Europe.
29 Romanian architects graduated the ”Ecole des Beaux Arts” in Paris, between 1840 and 1894; they represented the first generation of architects who, together with a group of French architects, started the transformation process of Bucharest into a European capital. The birth of the city’s identity as a Western city is connected to the period between 1859 – the Unification of Principalities and 1877 – the year when Romania gained its independence.
Victoria Avenue
Bucharest was the first city in the world to be lit with oil lamps (1856), followed by Vienna, where the first lamps were installed only in 1859.
