This comparative attempt, intended for postgraduates and scholars of Eastern-Central Europe, investigates the political, economic, and cultural landscape of Habsburg Galicia and the Romanian Kingdom in the second half of the 19th century. Often, in historiography and in the public sphere alike, the two cases under study have been separately regarded as contexts that provided…
Saint Margaret Evangelical Church in Mediaș (Transylvania)
This fortified church was first mentioned in the 15th century, more precisely in 1414. Of the same century dates the tryptic altar (see in the photos below), painted under the Austrian lands influence. This church is part of the oldest fortified city fortresses in Transylvania, hence the church was also known under the name of…
Exhibition: Polyperiphery-Public Spaces after ’89 and ’22 (Kyiv, Warsaw, Bucharest, Brno)
This is an exhibition which explores the manner in which the negotiation centre vs. periphery, periphery vs. periphery, national/cultural centres vs. local/constructed centres is taking place in four cities of Eastern-Central Europe: Kyiv (Ukraine), Warsaw (Poland), Bucharest (Romania), and Brno (Czech Republic). The time of focus is the transition from the communist to the democratic…
The Lutheran Community and Cemetery in Bucharest, Romania
We can talk of a Saxon community in Bucharest as early as the first half of the 18th century. Most of them were of Lutheran faith. In 1730 they had a pastor, whereas in 1749, recorded sources refer to a community which followed the precepts of the so-called Augsburg creed. In 1751, the Phanariote…
Sweets and Candies’ Commercials and Packages, from Interwar to Communist Romania
In Romanian Principalities, the first confectionary enterprises appeared in the 18th century, during the Phanariot rule, when the Greek and the Ottoman culinary influences were intertwined. The most common sweets and desserts of the time were the baklava related ones and the preserves. Rose water was an important ingredient. Once the Western influences took a…
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
The building which hosts The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is located on 17 Listopadu 2 street, near the old Jewish cemetery, in Josefov district, once, before WWII, a thriving centre of Jewish religious, commercial and artistic life. The building is the last public constructions in Prague designed in the Neo-Renaissance style. It was…
Cubist Interior Design in Prague, Czechia
Cubism, one of the first avant-garde movements in Europe, which drew its inspiration mainly from natural science and from the theories of perception, found an outstandingly fruitful territory in the Czech lands, in the years before WWI. Here, artists grouped in the Manés Association of Fine Artists, established in 1887 in Prague, on the model…
Christmas Time at the Castle (Cantacuzino Winter Residence in Bușteni, Prahova Valley, Romania)
For further details on Cantacuzino Castle and on Bușteni, please read my previous post, Vernacular Architecture in the Southern Corridor of the Carpathian Mountains https://ralucagolesteanu.com/2018/02/06/vernacular-architecture-in-the-southern-corridor-of-the-carpathian-mountains/
Prague Modernisms: From Late Art-Nouveau to Proto-Expressionism
It is an obvious fact to Prague’s visitor that the architectural ages of this city are in a chronological, synchronic, and diachronic dialogue with each other. The group of constructions in Hradčany follows the passage from Romanesque, through Gothic and Renaissance to Baroque and, later, to Historicism (via Classicism), echoing the historical developments of the…
The Municipal House (Obecní dům) in Prague, an Art Nouveau Masterpiece
Obecní dům in Prague, located on Náměstí Republiky, is a multipurpose building constructed in the years 1906-1911 by Antonín Balšánek and Osvlad Polívka. It was built where the King's Court (i.e. the seat of the Bohemian kings) stood in the 14th and 15th century. At the turn of the 20th century, the area around the old…
A Penguin Named Waddles 