From birth to the present
Bucharest, the capital of Romania, covers some 228 sqkm and, although it is not part of any county, it has a population larger than any of the 41 counties (judete) of Romania. The city is divided into six sectors. Each sector has it own Primaria (city hall) and is administered by a an elected mayor with local councilors. The General mayor governs all the sectors of the City from the City Hall of Bucharest.
This article which introduces the long and meandering history of the city is the beginning of a series of articles each of which will be dedicated to one „sector” of the City. The following articles will guide you, our reader, to the must-see sights of each sector, and also present the quiet, hidden gems which escape the casual eye and which give an air of authenticity, those „sincere” places that the 21st century has yet to turn into glass and concrete constructions, and where people still follow an old way of life.
The Bucharest of today lies in the great Romanian plain, but one thousand years ago it was the Great Romanian Forest, which covered the lands from the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube. Its name was “Codrul Vlasiei” (Forest of the Vlah Country as the south of Romania was called back then) and its memory remains today in the Baneasa forest, which grows ever smaller as the city continues its current trend of development towards the north. Long ago, in the clearings of the wild woods, towns started to appear.
One example is Ploiesti, about 50 km from the present Bucharest, and of course the City itself. Within the area of today’s Bucharest traces of more than 40 hamlets have been found, each with no more than a dozen houses, perhaps a thousand years old. But as any respectable city, Bucharest has its own legendary founder. He was a shepherd called Bucur who is said to have built an hermitage and a small settlement on a hill, historians think might have been where the Old Court is today. The name of the city is a plural form, maybe referring to the descendants of Bucur, who continued to live quietly in the little earth houses he built. Nothing more is known of them until the turn of the 15th century when Mircea cel Batran (Mircea the Old), king of Valahia and a great fighter against the Ottoman Empire, decided to erect a fortified royal court here, called, probably in the tradition of the times, the Court of Dambovita.
All this happened in the crossroads of many major trading routes of the time. The roads from Transylvania and Moldavia to the Danube and the Balkans united into one great highway at what is today Pitesti, and then headed south via Bucharest.
The first documented evidence of the name of the city comes from Vlad Tepes, the king who became known to foreigners as Dracula, but who for Romanians is another hero of the fight against the conquering Ottomans. He transformed the Court of Dambovita into the Fortress of Bucharest. In a document dated September 20, 1459 he mentions Bucuresti and this date is considered the birthday of the city, celebrated each year with great joy.
By the 16th century Bucharest had grown from a royal fortress to a city and more and more streets appeared. They were called “bridges” because they were covered by wide boards (“wardrobes”) which lay on trunks of trees (“bears”) and this tradition of paving continued until the 19th century for it protected against mud and allowed carriages to drive and people to walk unhindered. The visual effect, as one traveler noticed, was of a never-ending bridge.
A bazaar opened during the 16th century, a permanently open market, replacing the traditional Sunday markets, and we have the name of the first mayor of the city, dating from 1563. He was called the judet (the person who delivered justice) his name was Necula, and was helped by 12 councilors, Romanians and Greeks – as there were many Greeks living here at the time, mostly merchants, having a traditional affiliation with the Greek monasteries. The Judet could judge in matters of lower importance, and enjoyed a certain level of independence, with more important matters being administered by royal officials. The judet was elected annually.
This city is a survivor of many calamities which threatened to wipe it out. Plagues, famine, war and plundering, floods and fires, not to mention earthquakes have brought Bucharest and its royal court down time and again. But the people here, as a Turkish traveler noted years ago, are quick to rebuild and, to his surprise, a year later the city was thriving again.
In the 17th century the city is a place where many nations mingle and sell their goods. Italians, Greeks, Romanians, Turks and Serbs crowd the markets and the streets and it feels like the whole world is gathered there, says another observer of the times.
The next century brings kings of Greek origin to power in Bucharest, brought in by the Ottomans tired of rebellions. New palaces are built and the Old Court (Curtea Veche) forgets forever its old glory, becoming a gathering place for beggars and tramps who call themselves “crai” (princes).
By 1774 there are 64 neighborhoods in the city and King Alexandru Ipsilanti creates a commission of 6 officials to work on a clear delimitation of the city. This is not respected, so a few years later the borders of the city are again fixed, with a wooden palisade. Houses start to crowd within the city limits. At the beginning of the 19th century the city had around 80,000 residents, making it a big city in Southern Europe. The residents were a mix of Romanians, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Austrians, French, Russians, Germans, Armenians, Turks, Jews and others.
It is during this period that the five districts of the city came to have colors associated with them, and folks started to call them “vapsele” (paints). Blue covered what is today the Calea Victoriei area, Yellow for the Outer Market (the Obor market area), Red for the Inner Market (the center of the city), Black for the south east of the city and Green for the south west. In later years Red was absorbed into the other four districts. In mid 19th century the first building for the City Council of Bucharest was inaugurated.
The middle of 19th century brought another great calamity: the Great Fire of 1847, the last one to ravage the city to the point that it had to be reconstructed from what few buildings remained. However, this paved the way for important modernization works. The first urban regulations came into force and the first public parks were created, among them Cismigiu and Kisselef. Following the Paris example of designs by Baron Hausmann, large boulevards cut the city on its axes, from the east to the west (today’s Elisabeta, Academiei, Carol and Pache Protopopescu) and north to south (Lascar Catargiu – Gh. Magheru) and the course of the Dambovita was changed to prevent destructive flooding, while great new buildings were built along the new river banks, for example todays Palace of Justice.
The administrative law of 1926 divided the city into four sectors (Sector I Yellow, Sector II Black, Sector III Blue, and Sector IV Green) and the suburbs. In 1950 the city was re-divided into 8 regions which will become 8 sectors in 1968.
In 1979 the sectors are reduced from 8 to 6 and with this last division we are back to the present from our trip to the past. In our next issue we will start telling you about the beauties of Sector 1 of modern Bucharest, capital of Romania.
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