The Monument of Buzesti Brothers

The Poenaru House was built in 1890-1895 by the Italian company Adotti and belonged to a family that had large estates, namely that of Constantin Poenaru. The sumptuous building was built with the help of architects Ion Mincu, I.D. Berindei and Duiliu Marcu. The Students' House functioned in the building. The building is a monument where elements of the late French baroque style and neo-classical French style come together on the exterior, and the late Baroque and Rococo styles are intertwined in the interior. From the Great Hall of Honor, a T-shaped marble staircase allows, to the east and west, access to the basement. On the left and right of the staircase there are two large mirrors made of Venetian crystal. At the end of it was the Honor Chamber, accessible through a wide door with four sashes. From here one can pass to the other rooms through ornate doors. Source: https://audiotravelguide.ro

The Rusănescu House in Craiova is a historic architectural monument from the end of the 19th Century, located in the central area of the city, at the intersection between Ştirbei Vodă Boulevard and Calea Unirii. The House, belonging to the Craiova boyar Ştefan D. Rusănescu, is now known as the Marriage Registry Office and hosts several sections of the Community Public Service for the Evidence of Persons in Craiova (Civil Status, Tutelary Authority). The Rusănescu House has a built area of 579 sqm with a height regime without basement, but with ground floor, upper floor and attic, and an interior courtyard. The house is a blend of styles, including features of Art Deco, late Baroque or Viennese style. At the exterior, there is a rich ornament around the entrances, windows and cornices, with decorative plaster made of cement mortar, an enclosed balcony above the main entrance and a skylight tin roof. Inside, the building features decorative panels on the walls and ceilings, painted in oil on the wall, and in oil on wood in the carpentry, an upstairs stained glass above the hallway and the stairwell, and a monumental staircase accessible through the secondary entrance (through the inner courtyard). The house was restored in 1999, with the works being performed in order to rebuild interior finishing (paintings, stuccos in golden leaves, ceilings, mirrors and skylight). Source: www.monumenteoltenia.ro Photo: www.monumenteoltenia.ro; https://audiotravelguide.ro

The building in which the secondary headquarters of Craiova City Hall are located, on A. I. Cuza Street, at no. 1, dates from 1900-1905 and is on the list of historical monuments. It was built according to the plans of architect Otto Hesselmann. According to archive records, the building was designed from the very beginning to have two purposes. Here, a hotel, but also a bank office, were supposed to operate. To fulfill the first purpose, the Palace Hotel was designed in a manner specific to most of the early 20th century hotels in Bucharest. As in the capital, the hotel was positioned on a street corner, with two main facades and entrances and apartments located right on the corner of the building. The double utility of the building can be seen on the inside. Architects talk about a special concept of "building inside the building" that can be noticed as soon as you enter the building. The ground floor and the first floor have been fitted with a large indoor hall and many counters to serve as bank office. On the second, third and attic floors are the apartments where the guests of the Palace Hotel were accommodated. The most interesting element of interior decoration is the main skylight. Located on the first floor, it functions as a "light garden", according to the specialists. The building also had many beautiful paintings and wainscots, especially in the hotel rooms, but they have deteriorated over time. Five earthquakes have passed over this building, beginning with the one in 1908 and ending with the one fromt the 1990s. They have seriously affected the building’s resistance structure. Despite the fact that the traces of time can be easily observed everywhere in the building, local authorities say that no consolidation work has been done, not even after the earthquake of 1977. Source: https://audiotravelguide.ro/hotel-palace-craiova/ Photo: https://audiotravelguide.ro/hotel-palace-craiova/; www.monumenteoltenia.ro

The Dianu Houses are a small architectural jewel of Craiova. Located right in the city center, they have always been some of Craiova's most attractive buildings. Spacious and solid, they amazed the locals when they were finished in 1902. The facades loaded with floral ornaments and balconies in the Art Nouveau style with wrought-iron railings, were enjoyed so much by the local aristocracy that they began to be copied. The Dianu House has a single upper floor and is beautifully decorated with window-frames, with a masonry corner balcony and another forged iron balcony towards A. I. Cuza Street. It has a steep slope roof with a truncated pyramid shaped dome on the corner and another pyramid shaped dome above the alleyway towards A. I. Cuza. On the side towards Panait Moșoiu Street, there is a truncated pyramid shaped dome exactly at the middle of the building. On this side there is another wrought iron balcony and another masonry balcony towards the area called the "Small Crossroad". On the ground floor there were always two or three shops of little importance, visited by those who descended towards the "Small Crossroad". In the summer of 1934, in Craiova it was held the trial of the railwaymen and oil miners who had organized big strikes in the previous year. During the trial, a "defense committee" was set up and the newspaper "Defense of the Railwaymen" appeared. The headquarters of the editorial office were initially in the house of lawyer Costel Dianu (A.I. Cuza Street, no.16) opposite to today’s National Theater. The Dianu House was later the headquarters of the Craiova Committee against the Imperial War of Looting and Conquest, which included Mihail Cruceanu, Eugen Constant, av. Nicu Popilian and av. Costel Dianu. The facade of the house was renovated in 2014, following the City Hall's decision of renovating the aspect of the entire historical center of Craiova Source: vladimirrosulescu-istorie.blogspot.com/2016/05/casa-dianu-aicuza.html Photo: https://www.facebook.com/craiovadeieri/

The "Museum of the Romanian Book and Exile" constitutes a unique, large-scale project, whose well-defined purpose is the reunification of Romanian culture with the cultural patrimony produced outside the country, from the post-war Romanian exile up to the present day. Its holdings include nearly 40 collections of immense value in terms of their content: The "Academician Basarab Nicolescu" Collection; The "Leonid Mămăligă" Collection; The "Neuilly Circle" Archive Collection; The "Hyperion Association" Archive Collection; The "Mircea Milcovitch and Maria Mesterou" Collection; The "Andrei Șerban" Collection; The "Paul Barbăneagră" Collection; The "Corneliu Șerban Popa" Collection; The "Vintilă Horia" Collection; The "Cicerone Poghirc" Collection; The "Andrei Codrescu" Collection; The "Carmen Firan and Andrei Sângeorzan" Donation; The "Victor Cupșa" Collection; The "Constantza Buzdugan" Donation; The "Bujor Nedelcovici" Collection; The "Cezar Vasiliu" Collection; The "Valeriu Veliman" Donation; The "Mircea Eliade" Collection; The "Emil Cioran" Collection; The "Ileana and Romulus Vulpescu" Collection; The "Șerban Viorel and Rodica Stănoiu" Donation; The "Academician Dan Berindei" Collection; The "Academician Dinu C. Giurescu" Collection; The "Academician Ștefan Ștefănescu" Donation; The "Romanian Institute/Romanian Library in Freiburg" Donation; The "George Banu" Collection; The "Dumitru Milcoveanu" Collection; The "Octav Calleya" Collection; The "Horia-Dinu Nicolaescu" Donation; The "Nicolas Adam" Collection; The "Ion Deaconescu" Donation; The "Aurora Cornu" Collection; The "Miron Kiropol" Collection; The "Grigore Arbore" Collection; The "Theodor Damian" Collection; The "George Roca" Collection; The "Romanian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences" Collection; The "Romanian Exile Memory at the National Romanian Television" Collection. The project emerged from the need to create an overview of Romanian spiritual creations, made beyond the country's borders during the communist regime. The uniqueness of the Museum's holdings lies within a formidable, remarkable diversity, easily noticeable, especially in terms of the fields represented, ranging from the humanities and social sciences, theology and music, to performing and visual arts, as well as the types of materials that make up each individual collection. When visiting a multitude of museum exhibits, one can observe handwritten dedications in highly valuable books, original manuscripts and documents from the libraries of the personalities represented in the Museum, thousands of pages of correspondence from famous exiled writers, presented for the first time to the Romanian public, as well as unique pieces of visual art in painting, sculpture, drawing, or engraving. The archives held in the museum's collection serve as a robust testimony, a documentary fresco of the cultural, scientific, and artistic activities undertaken by personalities of the Romanian exile. They also represent an invaluable research tool for all those concerned with the creations and memories of cultural figures who settled around the globe during the era dominated by Romanian communism. The museum's efforts, therefore, aim to popularize the works signed by prominent names of the Romanian exile which, up to now, have circulated for almost half a century solely outside the country's borders, with only a small portion being published and translated into Romanian.

The idea of placing in Craiova a statue of the great voivode, who has held a high local title (Ban of Craiova) before being a ruler, dates from the beginning of the 20th century. In 1913 an initiative committee was set up in order to erect a monument dedicated to Michael the Brave, in Craiova. In 1927, the "Friends of Science" Society („Prietenii Ştiinţei“) proposed to place the statue in the Unirii Square. In 1933 they addressed the City Hall of the capital the request to move the statue of Michael the Brave to Craiova, if a larger one was to be erected in Bucharest. The sculptor D. Pavelescu-Dimo made a sketch for a magnificent monument dedicated to the great voivode, but it never materialized. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Craiova had to wait a long time to see the statue in its current place, because, for many years and for various reasons, it was located in the yard of the Museum of Art. The statue was brought to Craiova in 1974, but it laid dismantled somewhere in the backyard of the Museum of Art until 1990. In 1990, the statue was erected in downtown, in Unirii Square, near the Prefecture building, facing west. Between 2004-2008, on the occasion of the downtown rehabilitation, it was moved to the large park between the Prefecture and the Holy Trinity Historical Church, facing east, and with great artesian fountains in front.

The bust was made by the sculptor Marcel Voinea and was unveiled in 2014 in the presence of the officials and the citizens of Craiova. The bust was created as a sign of gratitude for the contribution to the development of Craiova, especially for the founding of the University of Craiova and of the Oltenia Philharmonic. The bust of King Michael I is located in the National Flag Square, Craiova. Source: audiotravelguide.ro Photo: audiotravelguide.ro

The bronze statue, work of art of the sculptor Mircea Spataru, was placed in front of the high school building named after Carol I, in December 2007. Photo: audiotravelguide.ro

The bust of the painter Theodor Aman, work of art of the sculptor Ion Jalea, was cast in bronze in 1962. The bust showing Theodor Aman holding the brush in his right hand and the painting palette in his left hand, is placed in the courtyard in front of the Museum of Art in Craiova, hosted at the Jean Mihail Palace. At the bust base it is engraved: "Theodor Aman 1831-1891" along with the signature of the sculptor. The bust of Theodor Aman was part of the consolidation and restoration project of the Jean Mihail Palace, initiated at the end of 2009. On this occasion, the bust was cleaned and the foundation, the socket and the plywood in travertine were restored. Source: http://www.monumenteoltenia.ro Photo: http://www.monumenteoltenia.ro