Today we will be exploring less known tourist attractions, which are just waiting for your visit.
One of them is the Clock Museum in Ploiesti, the other is the National Police Museum in Targoviste, and the other is the Dimitrie Leonida National Technical Museum in Bucharest. In Ploiesti, on the street bearing the name of the founder of museography in Prahova County, professor Nicolae Simache, we can visit the Clock Museum, set up in 1963.
Elisabeta Savu, head of section at the museum, told us why it is worth visiting: “The Clock Museum is unique among Romanian museums, through its specificity. It is the only clock museum in South-Eastern Europe, as the closest such museum is in Vienna, Austria. We boast a rich and diverse collection. There are very old pieces in the museum, many of them 400 years old, very diverse exhibits, pocket watches, table and wall clocks. The museum also has a particularity not encountered in any other museum in the world: it has over 30 exhibits, which not only have a technical and artistic value, but also a symbolic, memorial one. They belonged to great Romanian and foreign personalities. In two months, our visitors will have the surprise of seeing us in a new venue, at the Prahova Museum of History and Archaeology.”
In Targoviste, former seat of Wallachia before the 15th century, we can find the Princely Court Complex, the History Museum, the Print Museum and the Old Book Museum, the Museum of Targoviste Writers, the Art Museum, and another unique institution, the Police Museum of Romania.
Ovidiu Carstana, director of the Princely Court Complex Museum, recommends we visit it: “Close to the Princely Court, Prince Constantin Brancoveanu had a smaller construction built, for his youngest son. It was known as the House of Heirs, and it now houses the National Museum of the Romanian Police. Even if this museum is not part of the Princely Court Complex, we can see there the history of the Romanian Police from 1821 to the present, showcasing famous cases, and a room displaying police uniforms from all over the world, as the museum is affiliated to the International Police Organization.”
Our next stopover is in Bucharest, where the Carol Park venues the “Dimitrie Leonida” National Technical Museum, set up in 1909. The museum bears the name of its very founder. We’ve asked the museum’s director Laura Maria Albani to help us take a look at the marvels of the museums’ permanent collections.
Laura Maria Albani: ”Our heritage is unique in Romania, so it’s rather difficult for me to speak about all we‘ve got here. Let me give you just one example. We have the world’s first jet automobile. The devices look like a sphere, and the pressurized air gets out of two adjusting systems and sets in motion the sphere revolving around its axis. We have a spectacular 1889 Olds Patent carriage –automobile that was rolling around Bucharest with the then unacceptable high speed of 15 kilometers per hour, loudly tooting the horn on any obstacle that got in the way. Then we have the first electrical power plant that has ever been used in Romania, which was operational only 6 months after Edison brought electric lighting in New York, in 1882. You can only see that in the Technical Museum. In 1964 when Walter Chiffler, president of the Edison Company in the United States visited the museum, he asked what he could give the museum in exchange for the Edison generator, which provided lighting for the National Theater in Bucharest. The answer was: ’the transaction is impossible, given that the item is unique in its kind’. Then we have the sound engine created by Gogu Constantinescu, the world’s first aerodynamic automobile, made and patented by Aurel Pertu in Germany, in 1923. Its shape, which is that of a falling half water drop, is to this day the ideal design for almost any moving vehicle. Then we have the famous K rasps, with gold and platinum electrodes, which question the second principle of thermodynamics since they work to this day. And there are so many other things, but I just don’t know which I should first speak about.”
We should also mention here the replica of the Vuia aircraft, which on March 18, 1906 took off from Montesson in France, for the first time ever, and only with self-sufficient devices on board, as well as the first individual aircraft, created and patented by Justin Capra in 1958.
After all these, we believe Romania’s cultural objectives will be waiting for their visitors.
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