After 1830, Bucharest witnesses the first systematic planning of parks and gardens, which had initially been private properties of more or less aesthetic value. In the first half of the century, Braslea Garden was a gathering place for workers and merchants; afterwards its place was taken by Ioanid Garden (known thereafter as the Puskin Garden, then again as Ioanid Garden). After 1844, the planning of the Cismigiu Garden starts, with the superintendence of German horticulturist Meyer (one more example of the attraction the city had on Western architects and engineers as well as on Balkan craftsmen). The garden, which was of about the same size as today, was finished in 1852. Kisseleff had also dreamt of acclimitizing the garden, and the elderly inhabitants still remembered that on one side of it had been a lake owned by a certain Dura, a local merchant. In both Cismigiu and Dimbovita waters angling was successful up until the close of the century; there are still some who do it unsuccessfully, more for the sake of poaching than out of nostalgia.

            Although determinedly on the road of modernizaton, the city was not spared the cataclysms that were by then part of its tradition and history: a powerful earthquake in January 1838; in the spring of the following year, the overflowing of Dimbovita; and at Easter time, in 1847, a fire that overpowered the firefighters? efforts (who had become organized in a modern institution only in 1845). The fire had been set by childish play and devastated 1,142 shops, 686 houses, 12 churches and monasteries and 10 inns. The houses, the shops, even the inns were rapidly rebuilt; once again, the churches fared worse.

            Towards the middle of the century, Bucharest was once again a revolutionary stage due to the enthousiastic 1848 revolutionists. A new generation, more Europeanly-minded than all former generations, was about to take over. The Romanian Infant, as C.A. Rosetti?s periodical was called, issued in the summer and autumn of 1848, can be taken as a quite adequate metaphor.