Bucharest Up Until the Mid of Our Century as It Used to Be and Never Will Again
Adrian Cioroianu
 
Translated by Octavian Logigan and Sorana Corneanu

6. Revolutions and city engineering

            Bucharest had shyly entered the 19th century, without knowing that it had set for a time of rapid and all-encompassing changes, just like the entire country.

            The revolutionary decades followed. In the times of Tudor Vladimirescu, Bucharest was the starting-point and somewhat later the apogee of the social movement led by Vladimirescu. Towards the close of his misadventure, he set off to Tirgoviste, where he was murdered by his former companions. Nowadays there still are people who obstinately see a certain similitude between his death and the last living days of Nicolae Ceasescu who also set off for Tirgoviste in search of aid and was murdered there by some of his former companions. Anyway, coming back to Tudor?s death, Bucharest was immediately after conquered by the Turks. Inhabitants and passers-by could then see on the Mogosoaia Bridge one of the most dramatic episodes of that revolutionary movement, i.e. the murdering of Sava Bimbasa, the military leader of the Eteria. Thereafter, Bucharest will experience at least five more revolutions, so called by contemporary regimes, but it had not yet experienced a velvet revolution.

            The 1821 Revolution put and end to Phanariot domination and was followed by the reign of Grigore Ghica, who was also concerned with embellishing the city: the wooden bridges are consolidated, there are signs of stone-paving and city lights become a reality, at least for the center of the city. A new Russian and Turkish war causes the Tzarist armies to enter the Romanian Principality and advance to Bucharest in May 1828. That autumn, two terrifying epidemics, the pest and the cholera, concurrently strike Bucharest again. But the period is not totally unfortunate: one of the figures that is of definite historical importance to the city at the time is the Russian general Pavel Kisseleff, governor of Moldavia and of the Romanian Principality between November 1829 and April 1834. To Bucharest, Kisseleff?s presence was providential. Only a few months after his setting in Bucharest, he ordered an 8-member commission for ?embellishing the city?, two of them being, not at all by accident, doctors. Kisseleff?s projects were ambitious ? the mapping of the city, the creation of large boulevards with shadowy trees on each side, the draining of ponds that caused the swarms of mosquitos, street lights and even the building of a theater house. A Committee of the City was formed, its members being elected by the wealthy citizens. The first People?s Council of the City was to be elected in November 1831.

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