Tag Archives: Cityscape

Bucharest! It’s…complicated

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Friday 19 September 2025 – We’ve had a day wandering round Bucharest and my brain’s full. In a single post, it’s impossible to do it justice, so basically here are some random jottings from the day. We started with a guided walking tour, a goup of 12 of us, steered and educated by Horia,who led us through five kilometres of huge architectural variation and 20 centuries of turbulent history. When explaining how the country of Romania and the city of Bucharest have developed, his explanations almost always started, “It’s complicated….”. Frankly, given the history, I’m not bloody surprised.

  • Firstly, it was under the Romans in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and called Dacia (that’s pronounced Dachier, not Daysier, btw, so you can correct people’s pronunciations when they talk about Dacia Duster cars).
  • Then the Romans withdrew, as you do when your empire collapses (UK, look out!) and there were waves of Goths, Huns, Slavs and any number of other barbarians passing through.
  • By the 13th or 14th century, the area consisted of three principalities – Wallachia in the south, with Bucharest as capital; Moldavia in the east; and Transylvania, which was controlled by Habsburgs from Hungary. Don’t confuse Moldavia with modern Moldova, which is a real country and which occupies some of the area called Moldavia. Come on, keep up at the back.
  • From the 14th century, the Ottomans got into the act, expanding into the Balkans from Turkey until their influence butted up against Christian Europe as they squeezed Wallachia and Moldavia.
  • In the 15th century, Wallachia became a vassal state of the Ottoman empire, which meant it was largely left alone but compelled to pay tribute in funds and military support. Occasionally the locals resisted this liability, as you might understand, and the Ottomans responded by invading. The most notable rebel was one Vlad Țepeș; yes, “Vlad the Impaler”, who was the most effective leader of resistance.
  • Vlad, Horia told us, was in charge of an army numbering 5,000 which successfully repelled an Ottoman force ten times as large. He exploited Bucharest’s location – a swampy forest, basically, and used lepers and plague victims as soldiers – the first use of bacterial and biological warfare? Ottoman soldiers were reluctant to engage, ran away and were easy to trap in the forests, where they were impaled. Vlad invented a new and more brutal way of impaling victims so that they tended to die more of dehydration than of being actually, you know, impaled, and then left them in the forest as a warning to the Ottomans. Psychological warfare: nasty, but effective. Despite this resistance, Wallachia remained a vassal state to the Ottomans.
  • In the 19th century, Romania sought indepence, and fought with Russia against the Turks to fight free of the Ottomans, becoming a kingdom under King Carol 1 in 1881.
  • After the first World War, Transylvania became part of greater Romania.
  • In the second World War, Romania allied with Germany, but then switched sides at the end, allowing a Soviet takeover in the aftermath of the war. Ceausescu at first worked for independence from the Soviet regime, but turned into a harsh dictator, equivalent, in Horia’s view, to how North Korea is today
  • Eventually, the people got fed up with Ceausescu and rebelled in 1989. Since then it has officially been a democracy, but Horia was firmly of the opinion that elements of the Ceausescu regime managed to stay in control, and today’s Social Democratic party is their legacy; corruption and incompetence are marring Romania’s efforts to be a modern, efficient country.

We started the tour just outside Hanul Manuc, the restaurant we’d eaten at yesterday evening. Just there is the St. Anthony church and the remnants of Vlad’s castlewhich are being developed as a museum. The restaurant itself used to be a caravanserai, a place where merchants would come and stay to do business, for days or even months, before moving on. The caravanserai occupied what is now the courtyard that we ate in. Interestingly, the paving leading into itis not stone, but wood.Apparently, much of Bucharest was once paved with wood, although not of this high quality.The route of our tour led us through the Old Town, some of which remains, but much of which was demolished in the communist era.

I found the place impressive but dilapidated. There were many fine buildings, and much evidence of the French influence that led to Bucharest being called “Little Paris” in the 19th century

Victoria Shopping Centre

Palace of the Deposits and Consignments – a banking hall

City Library

Military College

Athenaeum

but there are many places where the architecture is a tortured mix of the classical and the communist era.Some buildings have a distinctive red disc on themwhich means that they are at risk of falling down if there’s another earthquake (there was a big one in 1977 which destroyed a lot of Bucharest, but not as much as the communists did, apparently).Many of these fine buildings are really quite dilapidated, Horia suggested that this is a combination of neglect under the communist regime (if they didn’t actively tear them down) and current private ownership which has neither the funds nor the will to pay for the upkeep.That said, there are many quirky corners of the old town.and its streets are thickly populated with bars and restaurants.There is so much to the old town that I can’t possibly do it justice without you drowning in photos, but it’s a great place to walk around, with a lively vibe – and plenty of crowds.The other thing there are a lot of is churches; Romania is a very religious country, as we saw in the devoted obeisances paid by people in the churches we visited. Some were in the old town, some outside that area. A big attraction for tourists and locals alike in the old town is the church of the “Stavropoleos” Monastery, which is beautifully decorated outsideand in.Of course, the communist era ranked very highly in Horia’s itinerary. We visited Revolution Square, site of what was the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee building (now the Ministry of the Interior)where one can see the balcony from which Ceausescu gave his final speech before realising that there was going to be an uprising which would unseat him.I remember seeing the news coverage of that speech, and the look of panic on his face as he realised that he’d lost control of the people and that the peasants really were revolting.We passed the Palace Hall, a 1960s communist era buildingwhich now bears the scars of the revolution that unseated Ceausescu in the form of bullet holes.It’s not the only building with bullet holes scarring it – there are others, reflecting the desperate efforts of Ceausescu to retain power by ordering his troops to gun down the rebels, which only delayed his unseating by one day – but it was a very bloody day.Our tour ended at the parliament building, which is simply immense – the heaviest building in the world and largest apart from the Pentagon, apparently.It was started in 1984, in the Ceausescu era and by the time he was deposed it was 70% finished and by then more costly to destroy than to finish. Accordingly, it was finished in 1997, and now has some 4,000 rooms in it. As well as serving as police, military and secret service headquarters, it apparently pays its way through tours, exhibitions and other events, but consumes a significant portion of the city’s electricity if all the lights are on.Other churches we visited included the Cathedral of the Patriarchy, which is south of the old town and is a striking building with a beautiful courtyard beside it.Inside is, like the others we visited, elaborately decorated.
Back in the old town we also visited the Russian Orthodox church of Saint Nicholas,another building which is beautifully appointed outside and in.
A few other photos from our walking around the city.
The last thing we did was to take an early dinner at another of Bucharest’s famous eateries, Caru’ cu bere, the Beer Cart, the “7th Most Legendary Restaurant in the World”. We’ve been legendary on two days running, and I can tell you it’s quite tiring and very filling. The interior of the place is extraordinary.
We indulged in more traditional Romanian sausages and much photography whilst we were there. Apart from walking back to the hotel to try to work off some of those sausages, this was the last thing we did in Bucharest. Tomorrow, we leave for parts more northerly, where Vlad’s name crops up again, as well as another famous character, about whom we will, I’m sure, learn more when we get there. Why don’t you join us?

Phase transition – to Oslo

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Monday 25 August 2025 – Rather than just bounce in and out of Oslo for the final phase of this trip, we had decided to spend a little time to absorb something of Norway’s capital city, making it Phase II of this trip.  All we had to do was to get there, preferably by 2pm, which was when our Dutch friend Hertz van Rental was expecting us to return his car. After a prompt breakfast, we were on the road before 9am.  We discovered, on checkout, why the hotel was happy for us to pillage the breakfast bar for our packed lunch – they charged us for it! They hadn’t made it clear that this was going to be the case, and it was actually a very modest charge, at least by Norway’s exorbitant standards. So we coughed up and only felt a faint twinge of guilt that we didn’t tell them about the second packed lunch we stole….

The journey down was pretty much the reverse of the one up, minus the rain showers – we drove all the way in bright sunshine.  Jane did manage to get a picture of something we missed on the way up – something atop a distant hill.

We’re not sure what it is, but it was nice to complete the set, as it were.

The milling devotees of these pages will know that Jane and I are fans of Interesting Churches; Iceland was a very fertile hunting ground for these, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. We had passed many churches as we drove around, and Jane had commented that they all seemed to be in the shape of a cross, but with equal spokes, as opposed to the norm in the UK and other parts of a longer nave and shorter cross arm.  Jane whistled up ChatGPT to research the subject and found that the Norwegian churches we saw were higher-capacity replacements for original stave churches, which were deemed to be too small for the congregations. This set us off on a delightful diversion, because neither of us knew what a stave church is.

We learned that a stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the building’s structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing pine posts are called stafr in Old Norse (stav in modern Norwegian). They often contained very intricate and detailed carvings. The replacement of stave churches by more modern ones has meant that there are only some 28 of them left in Norway, mainly built between 1150 and 1350, and that is only because in 2001, the National Heritage Board determined that they should be preserved for posterity.  Delightfully, one of these was just off our route, at Ringebu, so we diverted to take a look. And what a pleasure that was – it’s a delightful building. There were coaches in the car park and quite a few people there, so it’s clearly a popular site.

Jane had read en route that this church was only open during the summer, and we had missed that window by just a few days, so we resigned ourselves to just examining the outside, since this had joined the series of churches we’d visited that were closed.

The timber is preserved with tar, and it is educational to look at the shady side of the building,

where the tar has not been weathered so much by the sun. Like the Lesja church, this one had a side exhibit of old gravestones, crosses and other fragments.

However, on getting three-quarters of the way round, we found, to our delight, that the church was open!  The chap on the door explained that this was because there were several groups visiting (hence the coaches), and so we were very lucky to be able to piggyback on this to get a look inside.

It’s as striking inside as out.

Many parts of it go back to its origin, in the year 1120, such as the carvings around the door.

The inside is delightful.

There are, as expected, some very detailed and intricate carvings inside.

Altogether, it was a delightful diversion, made all the more so by the unexpected pleasure of being able to see the inside.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we handed back the rental car and found our way to the train station in the airport to head into Oslo.  The airport is a long way outside the centre – 50km – so train or bus are the only sensible options to get from one to the other. The bus journey takes an hour, so we decided to take the train. There’s a specialist train, the Flytog, but that’s twice the price of a standard train and no quicker, and we just managed to bundle ourselves into a VY train bound for Oslo as the doors slammed behind us. We were so rushed that we panicked a bit that we’d leapt on board the wrong train, but a nice elderly gentleman reassured us and engaged us in pleasant conversation until the guard came and told us to shut up because we were in a Quiet Zone.

We’re staying at the Hotel Bristol, which is something of an old-school hotel, occupying a large building, which makes the walk from the lift to your room something of a voyage of discovery. But it’s comfortable enough and furnished us with a nice lunch in elegant surroundings

(Jane had her favourite Toast Skagen) and an insight into Norwegian angst about alcohol.  At Trolltun, we’d tried and largely failed to get double-measure gin and tonics, as the staff there said they didn’t offer doubles. We tried again in the lounge here, and the nice lady who was serving us told us that it was actually against the law to serve double measures! Not only that but it was also against the law to try to game the system by ordering a G&T with an accompanying gin. You were allowed the one drink and could have another once you’d finished that.

This is very much in line with the general Scandinavian attitude to alcohol, which I think has its roots in Lutheran disapproval of anything that is actually enjoyable. I first came across it when I lived in Sweden, 40 years ago.  You could only get alcohol stronger than 2.5% by going to government-run off-licences, called System Bolaget, which was the only company I ever came across which ran adverts intended to dissuade you from buying their products. Things are a bit more relaxed now, but you can still only get spirits from System Bolaget to this day. On my first visit to Oslo – a business trip of just a couple of days – I inadvertently tried to order a post-prandial snifter of brandy, only to be told that they couldn’t sell me spirits because it was a Sunday, and I had to make do with port.

Anyhoo….having enjoyed our late lunch, we thought we’d go for a walk. Obviously.  So we pottered around trying to get a feel for the place.  I have to say that it didn’t call out to us. Perhaps we’ve been off the beaten track too much, but the noise and the crowds and the e-scooters all seemed a bit oppressive, somehow.  Still, we saw a few of the sights: there are some handsome old buildings among the modern stuff;

a striking cathedral with a lovely semi-circular cloister area behind it;

lots of modern stuff;

an Opera House which  is very proud of the fact that you can walk on its sloping roof;

plenty of museums, again well loaded with Architecture;

public saunas;

bits of sculpture in odd places;

“She Lies”, a public sculpture by Monica Bonvicini, which is supposed to be an iceberg, but which we thought was a listing ship

a remarkable town hall building;

and a sodding great fortress, which contains all sorts of buildings within its walls.

We have a full day here tomorrow, and the weather forecast is as sunny as today was, so maybe we’ll get a chance to get better under the skin of the place. Part of the day will be spent having a Nice Lunch with an old a long-standing friend but there are still some things we would like to see. So we are looking forward to an active day’s touristing, and you will be able to read all about it in these pages if you come back soon.

 

Intermission (Impossible): Siena

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Monday 19 May 2025 – Warning! Long Post Alert! Really long!!

I have to try to sum up Siena as we’ve seen it for the last couple of days, which is pretty much an impossible task. Actually, for a tourist only here for two days (for that’s what we are, before going back to becoming travellers tomorrow), there are relatively few highlights to hit: the Duomo, of course; the Campo (the main square); some notable churches; and the general scenery. Once you actually visit any of these tick-box items, though, you are deluged with all sorts of astonishing images. I’ve taken literally hundreds of photos, and obviously can’t bore you with all of them. I’ll try to summarise.

Our hotel, the Chiusarelli, is in a decent location, a few minutes walk from the centre of the old city.  I’ve mentioned its eccentricities, which also extend to decor.

Our room, while not particularly large, is comfortable enough. Unlike most hotel rooms we’ve come across so far (and not, I may add, just in Italy), it has a sufficiency of charging points for the various devices we use – camera, phones, activity monitor, backup drive, tablet – and some of these are usb-c, which is outrageously modern and very welcome. The breakfasts

are ample and feature Twining’s finest Earl Grey, so it has been a happy base from which to ramble. We’ve had a guided tour with the somewhat theatrical Serena, and also been for our own walks. Obviously. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things we’ve learned and some of the things we’ve seen.

Siena is built upon three hills. The practical upshot of this for us tourists is that to get anywhere involves toiling up really quite steep slopes. But for the original medieval settlers, it had a more significant problem – lack of water. Being on the top of hills meant that, unlike its dreaded rival Florence, a river didn’t run through it. It took some significant medieval engineering to create a series of underground aqueducts, 25km in length, called bottini. These tapped into underground springs and rainwater run-off, and were Siena’s principal source of water until the 20th century. There’s a fountain in the Campo, the Fonte Gaia, built to express gratitude for the water. It’s not impressive, like the Trevi jobbie in Rome, there are just a couple of she-wolves dribbling water,

but it represents something terrifically important for the locals.

The Campo itself, yesterday, was not the unencumbered place whose photo I shared the other day, oh no. All over the centre of Siena, barricades were being set up

and equipment rolled out

in preparation for the arrival, yesterday afternoon, of the Giro d’Italia, the Italian equivalent of the Tour de France.  As the day progressed, crowds began to build up

and, at around 5pm the circus arrived, unwatched by me, since I was

making myself useful. Jane watched on TV as the cyclists made their way into town and round the Campo to the finish. Apparently it was quite exciting.

The Campo has been used for racing of quite a different sort – horse racing, believe it or not. Twice a year, the outer edge of the Campo is covered in sand and 10 horses are raced for three laps, a process that takes just over a minute. But it’s a terrifically important minute, and the running of these races continues a tradition started, in Siena at least, in 1633 (apparently, this kind of lunacy has been going on in various other places since the middle ages, would you believe). The race, and the parades and other pageantry that precede it, is called “Il Palio“. Is it popular with the locals? You bet! This is a photo I got from a pamphlet on the Palio, showing the Campo as the race is running.

Why is it so important to the locals? This comes down to the way the city is divided into “contrade” – neighbourhoods. There are 17 in total and each horse represents a “neigh”bourhood. Only ten horses run each time; in the next Palio, the seven neighbourhoods which didn’t participate get a place as of right, and the other three places are allocated by lot. Horses are allocated by a draw, and to be the winning jockey is very important for the inter-neighbourhood rivalries.

Each neighbourhood has its own flag on which is represented its animal. The choice of animal is non-intuitive. One might expect lions, or tigers, but what you get is the rhino, the owl, the silkworm, the snail and other unlikely candidates.  Every contrada has its own museum, church, fountain and baptismal font, and if you look carefully, you can see the badges of different contrade on either side of a boundary.

Eagle on the left, Forest (featuring a rhino!) on the right

The flags are sold everywhere for tourists to buy;

one can buy individual flags or one with all of the insignia on it.

If I understand it correctly, the distinction between neighbourhoods extends even to the way the street lamps are mounted, on “braceletti”

though it would appear that there are also special braceletti, too.

Siena was an important city in medieval Europe, and its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which contains several buildings from the 13th and 14th centuries. The city is famous for its cuisine, art, museums, medieval cityscape and, of course, the Palio. According to local legend, Siena was founded by Senius and Aschius, two sons of Remus and thus nephews of Romulus, after whom Rome was named. Supposedly after their father’s murder by Romulus, they fled Rome, taking with them the statue of the she-wolf suckling the infants (Capitoline Wolf), thus appropriating that symbol for the town. You can see it all over the place; for example on the wall of the courtyard inside the Palazzo Pubblico, the town hall – the building with the tall tower (the Mangia Tower) on the Campo.

You can also see the she-wolf represented on the floor of the Duomo, so now that I’ve exhausted you with talk of history and such, let me show you some images from our tour of the cathedral. It took us a little time to work out how to get in, and in fact our guide, Serena, gave us the best info. We bought the inclusive ticket, for €16 apiece, which got us into the four main bits of this vast complex – the cathedral itself, the baptistry, an area called the crypt even though it isn’t one, and the “panorama”. Fixated as I am with aerial shots of places, we started with the panorama, which you can get to via (loads of bloody steps and) a beautiful arch.

This takes you into a courtyard of which one wall overlooks the Duomo from the eastern side.

This courtyard immediately made me think that it was once a church; in fact it was going to be a church, to expand the Duomo to be bigger than that thing the bastard Florentines have. It was never completed as the pillars you can see to left and right wouldn’t have been able to bear the weight of any roof. So now it’s a car park. But it’s a car park overlooked by a very tall wall, which one can climb; entry is via the museum, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.  An internal staircase and a couple of very narrow spiral staircases take you up to the lower

and then the upper level, officially called the Facciatone, from which vantage point the view of the Duomo is spectacular.

Because of the narrowness of the spiral staircases, the traffic up and down is closely monitored and carefully controlled; but, amazingly, we were virtually the only people there at the time we climbed it – it was more crowded later. You also get great views over the city and surrounding areas.

Coming down, you’re led through the museum, which has several museumish rooms with examples of embroidery

and paintings an’ that.

As you can tell, I’m not particularly moved by this kind of art. But awaiting me was a room with material in it which I did find engaging.

In the central display cases were books of ancient music – gregorian chants, written out on vellum and gloriously illuminated.

Around the walls were pictures on what appeared to be paper. We asked an attendant, who told us that they were drawings of the pictures made in marble on the floor of the Duomo. Indeed, there was one of the entire floor plan

with each marble picture carefully drawn.

Elsewhere, there were individual pictures of each of the tableaux.

This is a representation of the she-wolf, and it’s surrounded by the representations of other cities – Pisa, Lucca, Viterbo and so on. Remember this for later.

The way out takes you past a gallery of statues with a lovely representation of the rose window from the Duomo

and the exit is via the church of St. Nicholas,

which is also the gift shop – with possibly the ritziest gift shop ceiling on the planet.

Ritzy ceilings are a key feature in the baptistry, which is back through that arch and down a whole load of steps. Going inside made me catch my breath.

There are all sorts of beautiful details, but the fresco-painted ceilings are, for me, the most amazing aspect.

 

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that I have many more photos, but I hope these give you the basic idea. The bottom right-hand photo there is painted on the inside of a dome. Hold that thought….

Before going into the Duomo itself, we visited something inaccurately called the Crypt.  It’s not a crypt, it has no corpses in it. It was once a church, or perhaps the entry into the cathedral of the time, or maybe a meeting place – whatever, it was built on a level below the current Duomo, which was simply piled on top of it. No-one knew about this earlier space until in 1999 during renovations, workmen accidentally broke through a wall and found something painted blue. Careful research revealed this room, dating from the 1200s, whose walls were completely covered in frescoes which have been preserved by it being filled with debris in the 1300s, buried and forgotten. The interior was excavated – carefully, because of the not inconsierable bulk of the Duomo above, which necessitated special reinforcing to be put in place. And the result is a phenomenal display of frescoes telling biblical and Christian stories.

You can see the steel frame used to support the Duomo above,

and, on one wall,

lo! the outside of the dome of the baptistry. This has to be one of the most atmospheric places we have ever visited.

The final piece was, of course, a visit inside the Duomo itself.

This is the rose window reproduced in the statue gallery in the museum

 

As I said earlier, the floor is covered in tableaux made in marble. They are marblous!

and, of course, there’s the she-wolf.

There was nothing for it after all of this visual overload but to go for a Nice Lunch.  Heading back to the hotel afterwards for a Nice Lie-Down, we managed to do a key piece of shopping

which should stand us in good stead for the remainder of our walking.

Which restarts tomorrow.  We have some 21km to walk to Lucignano d’Arbia. We’ve had a fabulous time in Siena, and it’s been wonderful having the chance to draw breath and do the laundry – these things are important, y’know – but it will equally be nice to get underway again as we head to Rome. I hope you’ll accompany us through the medium of these pages.