Buzău Folk Art Collection

The city of Buzău is the county seat of Buzău County, Romania, in the historical region of Wallachia. It lies near the right bank of the Buzău River, between the south-eastern curvature of the Carpathian Mountains and the lowlands of Bărăgan Plain.

The Vergu-Mănăilă house is the oldest surviving building in Buzău. Erected in the 17th or 18th century and attested since 1794, the house belonged to the Vergu and Mănăilă families, personalities of the town at the end of the 18th century. The building was nationalized in 1948 and became derelict; it was restored between 1971-1974 (but it’s inside structure and it’s outside look were kept) and since then it hosts a museum of ethnography and folk art.

The museum hosts seven exhibition halls in which inside textures, ornaments, clothes and accessories, household objects were exposed. Also, women clothes can be admired, special outfits and traditional shirts (specifically to our area) and man clothes; a great variety of towels, wedding handkerchiefs, sheets, old carpets painted with natural colors; floral silk veils; different colored blankets of a variety of textures.

One of the rooms was decorated as what was called the “big house” stile, which represents the quest chamber which used to be part of each peasant house in the Romanian countries. The collection also contains objects that are specifically to different jobs: potting, fishing, hunting, viticulture and sheep-breeding.

Images and info from here

Melik House

Situated on 22, Spătarului Street and built somewhere between 1750-1760, Melik House (Romanian: Casa Melik) is the oldest civilian building from Bucharest that was preserved in its original form.

Nobody knows who the first owner of the house was, but it was sold in 1815 by its heirs to an Armenian merchant named Chevorc Nazaretoglu – his real name being Nazaretian. Chevroc Nazaretian and his wife moved in the house in 1822. Agop Nazaretian, Chevorc’s son, dowered the house to his daughter Ana,at her marriage with the architect Iacob Melik. Melik, who studied in Paris and participate actively in the revolution of 1848, wass bound to go into exile in France and Turkey. In return, after nine years of exile, he found the house in ruins. After repairs in November, will live here with his wife. The name of the house comes from Iacob Melik who lived here together with his family and who repaired the house many times.

Ana Nazaretian Melik, who died in 1913, bequeathed the house to the Armenian community from Bucharest, with the wish to found an asylum for the poor widows of the community. Eugen Melik, descendant, attacked the will and got the property for a short period of time, but the Armenian community won the trial and an asylum was arranged that functioned between 1921-1947. During this period, different tenants lived in the house and it suffered modifications and degradations.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Gheorghe and Serafina Raut, husband and wife, negotiated with the authorities of Bucharest the donation and partial redemption of the art collection they owned. While a student in Paris, Theodor Pallady lived in one of the Raut family apartments, in Place Dauphin. Raut family maintained a special relationship with the painter and the main condition of the donation was to provide a valuable display space for their art collection, who included many Pallady's works, and to host the Pallady Museum. Casa Melik was thus selected to house the valuable collection.

Last renovation of the house was in 1979. Between 1970-1994, the National Art Museum from Bucharest used it as a place to deposit valuable works of art that were going to be restored or those being in transit. In 1994 it has gained its final destination – Casa Melik, Serafina and Gheorghe Raut Art Collection and Pallady Museum – museal complex.

The size of the rooms, the breadth of the windows and the width of the doors were preserved inside the house, the pieces of furniture are entirely pieces of collection. The closed veranda hosts every Saturday morning courses of initiation for children in the art of drawing and color.

Ideea and images: Jurnal Românesc. Infos: Romania Explorer. Thanks!

Capşa House

More than a coffee lounge, more than a meeting place for artists, poets and politicians, more than a hotel, Casa Capşa is a real symbol of Bucharest.


The building that was to become "Casa Capşa", situated in the center of Bucharest, on Calea Victoriei (Victoria Avenue), at the crossroad with Edgar Quinet Street, was built in 1852 by justice of peace Slătineanu and bore the name of Slătineanu House until 1874, when the building became the possession of the members of Capşa family, who made history, gaining European fame and appreciation of the place. The history of Casa Capşa is closely connected to the destiny of a Macedo-Romanian family, descendants of furrier Dumitru Capşa. His coming to our parts was connected with one of the most dramatic episodes in the Balkan history: the complete destruction, in 1788, of the town Moscopole, the beautiful capital of the Macedo-Romanians, completely demolished by the Ottoman artillery.


In 1852, Anton and Vasile Capşa founded the first confectionery shop on Calea Victoriei, somewhat north of the present Casa Capşa, which was founded by their younger brother Grigore Capşa (1841-1902) in 1868. Anton and Vasile had financed Grigore through four years of courses at the renowned Boissier in Paris, where he turned down an opportunity to become the supplier for the French Imperial Court. The French-inspired confectionery of Casa Capşa soon established a continent-wide reputation. The business expanded in 1881 to a full-service restaurant, at a time when quality restaurants along Western European lines were still quite a rarity in Romania. Casa Capşa invented the all-chocolate Joffre cake in honor of a visit to Romania by Joseph Joffre after World War I, and they were the first to introduce ice cream in Romania.

The coffee house, established 1891, was an important literary and artistic gathering place, but never turned a profit, "because the writers and artists who went there usually ordered mineral water and coffee and made them last for hours on end." In contrast to the elegant restaurant and confectioner, the coffee house had simple, uncovered wooden tables. Tudor Arghezi referred to it as an "Academy"; one could make a literary reputation by reading one's texts there. Actors also were among the regulars: at the time the Romanian National Theatre was nearly across the street, adjacent to the Oteteleşanu Terrace, now the site of the Telephone Palace. When the Romanian Communist Party took power in 1948, they closed Casa Capşa. The restaurant operated during most of the communist era as the "Bucharest Restaurant", regaining the Capşa name in 1984. It was at the Capşa that the poet Nicolae Labiş stood up in November 1956 and loudly recited Mihai Eminescu's banned patriotic poem "Doina"; a few weeks later, after spending some time at the Capşa, Labiş was fatally hit by a tram, just a short distance away.


The enterprise was expanded in 1886 to include the Capşa Hotel, initially a guest house for members of parliament from out of town. The French manager had formerly managed the Hôtel Café Anglais in Paris. In 1908, the British magazine John Bull ranked it "among the best hotels in the world". According to the revived hotel's web site, "It was considered for a long time the only suitable residence of the artists, rich and aristocratic families or high rank politiciens [sic] and diplomats visiting Romania," a role it would eventually yield to the Athénée Palace. Among the hotel's guests in its heyday were German Kaisers Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II; Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef I; several members of the Imperial Russian royal family, including Tsar Alexander II; all four Romanian monarchs and their queens consort; kings of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria; and such other notables as Josephine Baker, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso, George Enescu, W. Averell Harriman, Józef Piłsudski, and Raymond Poincaré.


The In Your Pocket guide series describes it as having been "…the chosen venue for the beautiful people at the turn of the [19th] century… it degenerated into a Communist party haunt for the illiterate and intellectually unendowed party bosses". Mioara Ioniţă writes, "Its fame remains, but it has lost some of its pre-war glamour. It exists as such, but the spirit that animated it has vanished". "Capşa is the heart of the town, topographical and ethical. (…) Capşa is the tympan of this big ear that is Bucharest" (Paul Morand).