The southern area of
\nBucharest up until 1986 used to play host to the largest Christian Orthodox
\nmonastic compound in South-eastern Europe. It is known as the Vacaresti
\nmonastery. For long the compound had been rated the area’s most important
\nlandmark. Today, the denomination of Vacaresti still exists because of the
\nboulevard taking us all the way up to Piata Sudului, the southern marketplace
\nand the nature park, lying quite close to the place where the monastery once stood,
\nfour decades ago. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The then Socialist Republic
\nof Romania’s legislative assembly on October 29, 1974 voted into law the bill
\non urban and rural planning. It was actually a demolition policy of part of the
\ncity center of Bucharest, according to Nicolae Ceausescu’s vision. Until 1977,
\nsuch a policy had been implemented on a limited scale, with details being
\nespecially taken into account. But the 1977 earthquake occurred, which prompted
\nCeausescu to implement the policy on a
\nvery large scale. Demolition was brutal, while the great thoroughfares were
\nseverely cut. And that lead up to the disappearance of tens of thousands of
\nlodgings, private residences, one-of-a-kind buildings, such as the Brancoveanu
\nHospital or the Mina Minovici Forensic Medicine Institute as well as a great
\nnumber of churches. The great Vacaresti monastery was one of the Orthodox
\nworship places that back then was fatally brought down. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The compound was erected
\nbetween 1717 and 1722 by then the Wallachian ruling prince Nicolae Mavrocordat.
\nHe was the first Phanariot prince the Ottoman Empire appointed in the Romanian
\nPrincipalities. The compound stretched on a surface area of some 18,000 square
\nmeters, having two precincts. It was built on the Martisor hill, a green area with
\nlots of orchards. The architect G. M. Cantacuzino thought the Vacaresti monastery
\nwas QUOTE, the epitome of the master builders’ craft who were trained in the
\nBrancoveanu art school, UNQUOTE. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At the behest of the
\nBucharest Municipality’s History Museum, a documentary film was made in the
\nearly 1970. The Vacaresti Road is the only such film that survived in the
\narchives. It provides a detailed presentation of the huge monastery that later
\ndisappeared. Today’s viewers may find the images of the past building all the
\nmore precious, since the worship place is no more. We have selected two
\nexcerpts from the film’s screenplay. The first one explains the importance of
\nthe Wallachian architectural tradition in the centuries prior to the building
\nof the Vacaresti compound.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nconstruction of the Vacaresti settlement began in the spring of 1716, on the
\nslope of a hill generously overlooking the city of Bucharest, and was completed
\nin 1722. Its founder was Nicolae Mavrocordat, a prince whose enthronement
\ninaugurates the age of the Phanariot ruling princes in Wallachia, according to
\nthe text of the stone-written inscription in Romanian. The most famous
\nWallachian buildings were the Princely Church in Curtea de Arges, Cozia,
\nfounded by Mircea the Elder, the Mihai Voda Monastery, which at that time was
\nuphill as compared to the city of Bucharest, while Radu Voda was downhill
\nfrom the city, then there was the Sf. Gheorghe\/Saint George church in
\nBucharest, while the most famous of them was the monastery Brancoveanu founded
\nin Hurezi. These were the monuments that inspired ruling prince Nicolae
\nMavrocordat’s master builders when they erected the Vacaresti monastery. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mavrocorda\u021b ruling princes’
\nmonastery was the culmination point of the arts in the 18th century
\nin Wallachia. Here the most important sculpture works were found, such as the
\ncolumns, the base reliefs, the church decorations, inside and outside the
\npremises. Vacaresti boasted a large library, a wine cellar, buildings and
\nouthouses of the monastic community. Below is the second excerpt from the
\nscreenplay of the documentary film about the Vacaresti compound. It focuses on
\nthe special attention Nicolae Mavrocordat gave to the monastery he founded.
\nProof of that are the generous donations the prince made to the monastery. A
\nwell-deserved credit was given to the prince by posterity. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The ruling
\nprince endowed the monastery he founded, also ruling that, using its revenues,
\n‘strangers should be welcomed, the naked ones should be dressed, the hungry
\nshould be fed, the diseased should be tended to, those who were thrust in the
\ndungeon should be treated with clemency’. When, in September 1730, Nicolae
\nMavrocordat was killed by the plague, he was buried in the church of the
\nmonastery, in a beautiful marble tomb, with the carved armories of the two
\nprincipalities over which he ruled. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the second half of the 19th
\ncentury, the Vacaresti monastery changed its destination, in the wake of more
\nthan a century of monastic and spiritual life. During the 1848 revolution that flared up all across Europe, the Wallachian revolutionary leaders were
\nimprisoned in the hospital of the monastery by the Russian army. So we’re not
\nwrong saying the monastery was turned into a penitentiary, also due to its
\nconstruction design. In the first precinct, ruling prince Nicolae Mavrocordat
\nhad a princely seat built and a guard house for the troops providing his
\nsecurity. In 1868 the monastery officially became a prison where those who
\nplotted against the state were incarcerated, while the church and the second
\nprecinct retained their initial purpose. Icons of Romanian culture were imprisoned
\nin Vacaresti, such as writers Liviu Rebreanu, Tudor Arghezi, Ioan Slavici. The
\nfounder, in 1927, of the fascist movement named Archangel Michael’s Legion,
\nCorneliu Zelea Codreanu, was imprisoned there too. Codreanu confessed he was
\ninspired by an icon in the church. When in 1948 the communist regime was
\ncompletely instated in Romania, political opponents as well as laypeople were
\nimprisoned in Vacaresti. One of them was the Greek-catholic bishop Vasile
\nAftenie. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
But the threat of
\ndisappearance was looming large over the Vacaresti compound in the early 1980s.
\nConstruction projects of a gigantic congress hall, of a huge stadium, of a
\nsports facility and a court house prompted the then authorities to rule the
\ndemolition of the compound. Specialists made desperate efforts to save the
\ncompound; it was to no avail. Ceausescu himself issued the demolition order, on
\nDecember 2nd, 1984. After the demolition, the crosses, the columns
\nand all the sculpted pieces were for their most part stored in the Mogosoaia
\npalace. A small part of them was stored in the Stavropoleos church. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In 1990, the suggestion had
\nbeen made to rebuild the whole compound from scratch, but a shopping mall was
\nbuilt there instead. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Vacaresti monastery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":50395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45210],"tags":[45634,45631,45633,44308,45632],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-169850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rri-encyclopaedia","tag-build","tag-compound","tag-demolition","tag-monastery","tag-precinct"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n