The Natural, Anthropogenic, and Cultural Landscape Between Space and Time. Case Study: The Lost Gardens of Bucharest

Abstract

This study aims at promoting the research methodologies applied in landscape studies in all their quasi-natural, urban anthropogenic and cultural and historical components and on all research scales (at a macro-territorial, mezzo-territorial, or detail level). The study materialized in a series of case studies decrypted as being evolution research that focused on the serious issues of the loss and destruction of the cultural landscape heritage and of the decrease of green areas, of public spaces, and of valuable urban landscapes in Bucharest, Romania, especially in the context of historical evolution, including the communist and post-communist, transition period.

The project was conducted by studying historical records from the past until the present day, by using a transdisciplinary and multicriteria approach (Crăciun Metode de Abordare si Cercetare Exploratorii in Urbanism si Peisagistică. Epistemologia și Transdisciplinaritatea – Instrumente de cercetare a Peisajului Natural, Antropic și Cultural [Exploratory methods of approach and research in urban planning and landscape studies. Epistemology and transdisciplinarity – instruments in researching the natural, anthropogenic and cultural landscape], “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture Publishing House, Bucharest (2012)) and by overlapping historical, urban, and architectural layers and elements, by overlaying genius-loci and material and immaterial cultural landscape elements and by converging social, demographic, legislative, anthropological, linguistic, and archival components.

The research is based on the study of historical gardens that have totally or partially disappeared and that have a symbolic value and a coagulating function within the urban space and within the immaterial cultural landscape (traditions, general and local customs, etc.). The project highlights the expansion, development, and especially the decrease, destruction, and elimination of the landscape heritage and green areas, as well as of the urban-community areas in the last decades, by analyzing what has existed until present times with the purpose of achieving a balance in the time/space relationship within the landscape.

Introduction. History Between Space and Time

A country with a special history, with a nation considered in Europe to be a miracle (Bratianu 1986) of strength and permanence in time and space, Romania is a “Latin island” (MacKendrick 1978:9) that has preserved its essence for millennia in the midst of Slavic peoples and always under the pressure of migratory peoples and the Ottoman Empire. Located in a special strategic territory between the Carpathian Mountains, the Danube, and the Black Sea, a territory known in ancient times as Pelasgus, Ramania, Thrace, Dacia, Wallachia, or the Romanian Principalities, Romania has a long and rich history, filled with important historical events that have led to major dramatic changes not only locally, but also on a European level.

“It is the hearth of what we called Old Europe, a cultural entity between 6500–3500 BC, focused on a matriarchal society that was peaceful, loving and creator of art and that preceded the Indo-Europeanized patriarchal societies of fighters from the bronze and iron ages,” said Maria Gimbutas in the foreword to the Romanian edition of the book, Culture and Civilization. (Gimbutas 1989:49)

Located at the confluence of several sacred areas, transhumance paths, and, later on, of the trade routes that linked Western Europe to Eastern Europe and to the Middle East or Asia, the history of Romania is an example of endurance in space and time.

The first fragments of anthropogenic landscape in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, appeared in 1800 BC when evidence attesting the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures (Rossetti 1932; Berciu 1967; Gimbutas 1965) on the banks of the rivers Dambovita and Colentina appeared, in the areas now occupied by the neighborhoods Dudesti, Lacul Tei, and Bucurestii Noi. This area’s passage through the development process of the Bronze Age and all the way to 100 BC led to archaeological discoveries which revealed that sites located in the areas of Herastrau, Radu-Voda, Pantelimon, Dealul Mihai-Voda, Popesti-Novaci, and Popesti-Leordeni were populated by Indo-European Geto-Dacians. The first fragments of dwellings after the Aurelian retreat in 273 AC were attested in centuries three to thirteen and up to the Middle Ages.

At the level of the cultural landscape, the legend says that the city was founded by a rich shepherd who was the leader of several other shepherds and his name was Bucur, a word that has Thracian origins. His name gave the final name of the city “Bucuresti”, from “Bucur-esci” and “Bucur-esti”, this settlement being located on an important, sacred transhumance route. The toponyms which come from group names that end in “- eşti” are always based on a person’s name in Romanian and the suffix “- eşti” which appears in the structure of the group name and of the settlement name refers to the origin of a person even when used in singular.

In Dicţionarul toponimic al României. Muntenia (Romania’s Toponymic Dictionary. Muntenia), vol. I., the settlement name Bucureşti comes from the name “Bucur” (Iorgu 1963:160), which appears toponymized: “Bucur” (DTRoM 2007:356), as well as “Bucura” (DTRoM 2007:392).

Thus, the name of the human settlement, the name “Bucureşti”, designates those Bucur-esti, or Bucur’s descendants; because Bucur was supposedly the leader of the shepherds, his descendants were also important personalities of the settlement that stood out in the original village community.

Therefore, the evolution of Bucharest starts, according to historical sources, from Bucur, the rich leader of the shepherds who, in his attempt to defend himself from the Ottomans, built a fortress on the banks of the Dambovita River, in an old sacred place located on a transhumance route where, later on, he also built a church.

Several hundreds of years later, due to economic and demographic development of the population during those times, the fortress became the capital fortress of the ruler of the Romanian Country (the so-called Tara Romaneasca).

From a strictly historical point of view, the city was attested much later when Mircea cel Batran founded the city in the sixteenth century, and from a documentary point of view, it was attested through the document issued by Vlad Tepes on September 20, 1456, through which he strengthened the estates of some noblemen.

Bucharest was originally a small village located near a fortified castle built by Mircea cel Batran on the river Dambovita in the sixteenth century, considered to be located next to the “original village of Bucharest” (Leca 1937:94) that expanded in the fifteenth century at the same time as the trade fair that existed around the fortified castle and which was located on the transhumance road that linked the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube, the Black Sea, and the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, and Asia.

Later on, the villages located in the vicinity were also incorporated, becoming the so-called “slums” of the administrative-territorial unit, slums that had a sort of pivot or coagulating function for certain areas which had a strategic potential or were an access way at a later stage, located on the structuring axis of the river Dambovita and of Lake Colentina, and so on. This is the case for many villages that were thus incorporated into the city and which were located along the structuring shaft represented by Dambovita’s river path: Cotroceni, Grozăveşti, and so on.

The first scientific paper written about the early history of Bucharest and that sought to solve the quest for the roots of the present capital was written in 1891 by Lieutenant-Colonel Dimitrie Papazoglu who gathered all the legends and stories woven around Bucur’s fortress in the paper “The history of the foundation of Bucharest – the capital of the Romanian Kingdom – from 1330 to 1850 – taken after many ancient writers” (Papazoglu 2005), which gathered the information that referred to the history of the city between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries.¹

The agricultural development between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries leads to an unprecedented population growth and human settlements develop while the first pre-urban seeds emerge. In fact, archaeological research revealed that on the banks of the river Dambovita and of Lake Colentina there were 41 rural settlements, such as Ştefăneşti, Militari, or Bragadiru that had strong trade connections with the Bucur fortress.

Later on, in the second half of the fifteenth century, the Bucur fortress became the seat of the Romanian ruler Vlad Tepes and witnessed a powerful development due to its location at the crossroads of two very important trade routes which was a favorable condition for the development of commerce.

Around that initial trade area and the fortress, a political and administrative center developed later. The first written reference to Bucharest appeared on September 20, 1459 in a document signed by ruler Vlad Tepes who built his royal court there, a court that was later rebuilt during Mircea Ciobanu’s times (1545–1558). Around this morphofunctional core, guilds developed over time (bankers, furriers, merchants, etc.) and the city gradually grew due to the demographic and economic expansion.

Further development ensued as a result of the city being located on the sacred transhumance route that turned into a major commercial route, connected to the river Danube and the Black Sea. Its supervisory and strategic role over the road from Bucharest to Giurgiu, where an Ottoman garrison was located, and up to Targsor, led to the formation of the core of Bucharest’s central area, namely Curtea Veche, where, between 1558 and 1559, the ruler Mircea Ciobanul built the church, Biserica Domneasca, which stands today as the oldest place of worship of the capital, preserved in its original shape as a sacred core that has a crucial polarizing function.

This polarizing core represents the archetypal and morphostructural seed for the cultural landscape that defines the coagulation of the future human settlement seen as an interaction between natural and anthropogenic factors and which contributes to the formation of local culture.² Cultural landscape is a basic component of heritage but also a resource for economic activity, an environmental and social landmark that contributes to human welfare and to strengthening human identity (Enache and Crăciun 2013), in the context of avoiding the rapid transformation of cultural landscapes.

Bucharest, Romania’s capital, in 1840 witnessed the first horse-drawn omnibuses, being among the first cities in Europe that had such means of transportation, and in 1857 it became the first city in the world to employ kerosene for public lighting; at present, it is the sixth largest capital in the European Union.

Although nowadays Bucharest does not seem to have an old history in the field of landscape heritage, considering also the irreversible destruction that took place in communist times, the archives still mention valuable elements and memories of the capital’s gardens, many of which are now gone.³ The transformation or disappearance of these archetypal landscape elements is due to major urban changes as a result of a natural evolution in the city’s development in time and space, due to excessive urbanization or due to massive transformations through demolition and urban restructuring as the result of the totalitarian political view applied in the communist period.

These changes and the loss of the old landscape areas that have morphotypological value and sometimes a sacred archetypal nature are unfortunately still going on at present, due to unsuitable real estate projects and to the pressure of foreign investment companies that, under the guise of not knowing the historical importance of the area (genius-loci) and under the protection of permissive laws and dysfunctional administrative authorities, want to obtain a quick financial advantage at the expense of local history and urban landscape.

Research Methodology

Initiating a methodology for the study, analysis, and decryption of the morphogenetic and functional seeds of the natural, anthropogenic, and cultural landscape led to understanding the development of the capital’s urban settlement typology and to understanding the way it functions and establishes relationships at a territorial and regional level.

These elements, correlated with the historical evolution component, with anthropological and social study, with ethnology and ethnography, linguistics, and toponymy, but also with particular cultural landscape elements (morphotypology and urban structure units, urban life and framework, traditions, general and local customs, etc.) can lead to valuable results in historical, anthropological, social, architectural, urban, and landscape research.

This methodology (Crăciun 2012) has set out to research the future city through the lens of the past, in the sense of discovering and theorizing new ways of solving current dysfunctions and the necessary strategy for resilient future development (Crăciun 2014a:98–102) of the city of Bucharest. The study aims at supporting and forming a genuine research pillar for future major urbanism documentation, for large-scale urban strategies and projects, or for specific research in the field of spatial, urban, and landscape planning and of architecture or local history.

Such research can provide a theoretical approach through a specific and special type of theorized approach that can underpin the process of informing and putting together an important bibliographical database. These data and conclusions can represent the research basis necessary for other studies and specialists in the field that come from cultural spaces other than the European one and which may not have benefited from a local culture and an evolution with decisive historical connotations.

These elements were often decisive for the destiny and morphotypology of a human settlement, sometimes, as in the case of Bucharest, also having a tragic side at the level of the population’s emotional and community memory. Major changes were often the unnatural result of political will (forced demolition, restructuring, conversions) and, for decades in a row, they were not assimilated in the collective memory or in the city’s physical evolution.

The methodology aims at carrying out a theoretical applied study that connects the details with the mezzo- and macroterritory, in a multicriteria and transdisciplinary approach of the landscape’s historical heritage and of all of its components: quasi-natural and semi-natural, anthropogenic or built, by scanning history and the sacred from the beginnings until today, while overlapping the analysis with fields that relate to urbanism and landscape studies (architecture, ethnology, ethnography, anthropology, sociology, horticulture, etc.).

The research, in a transdisciplinary (Crăciun 2014c:3–14) sense, integrated archival documents, memoirs, literary documents (prose, poetry, literary memoirs), and folkloric documents (legends, stories, popular sayings, old songs, folk dress, folk symbolism, and iconography), research (in fields such as history, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, etc.), urban planning documentation, projects and plans that emphasize the city’s history,⁴ as well as works of art that represent images from old Bucharest (engravings, lithographs, prints, paintings, drawings, watercolor drawings), completed by multicriteria analyses and related social and anthropological studies (Pic. 1).

Pic. 1

The city of Bucharest: its system of parks, gardens, and waters 1770–1791. (Plan processed on the basis of historical information by Arch. Cerasella Crăciun PhD and by urban planning and landscape studies students Irina Luchian, Irina Ciobanu, Iulia Sarb, on the basis of 1770 Bucharest Plan and Plan der Wallachischen Haupt Residentz Stadt Bukurest by F. Ernst)

Objectives of the Historical Evolution Research

The general objective of the research was to update the information regarding Bucharest’s landscape, as well as to promote, raise awareness, and inform the different categories of urban actors on the importance of history, the urban and cultural landscape, and green areas and their role in improving the quality of the natural environment and of the health of the population. This general objective is vital in supporting an urban development policy for the capital.

The specific objectives focused on:

• Creating a research methodology for the landscape, through a transdisciplinary approach located at the contact point with other related sciences, research that tackles all the components of the landscape and all its scales

• Raising the interest of local and central administration with regard to the decay of the quality of urban life and implicitly of the health of the human and urban organism (Crăciun 2008)

• Highlighting the expansion of green areas in previous centuries and the decrease of green areas in recent decades

• Examining the quality and quantity of the green areas in Bucharest

• Raising awareness and responsibility and creating a dialogue platform between the different categories of urban actors (decision makers, civil society and community representatives, specialists, the general audience) with regard to landscape and green areas issues

• Creating a forum for Lost Gardens where target groups can participate interactively through opinions, discussion groups, posting archival documents, personal historical documents, anthropology elements, different stories about gardens, family photos, and the like⁵

• Stimulating reflection and a critical attitude in the urban landscape field, as well as making a study that can be the basis of a future instrument for monitoring the health of the population and increasing the quality of urban life for the human settlements in Romania (Crăciun 2009a)

• Preserving and enhancing the natural landscape heritage and assessing the impact and the quality of the interventions made on it

• Disseminating information and supporting the training also of the general public in the field of urban planning and landscaping

• Establishing the relationship between the detail landscape and the mezzo-landscape, namely the outskirts, the green–yellow–blue belt and the macroterritory that can be the basis of a theoretical approach which in turn can be the foundation of Bucharest’s beltway

• Promoting the cultural quality of the landscape, along with the architecture and urban planning product, by popularizing landscape as a message and development vector for the territory

The purpose of the research was to develop specialized conclusions drawn graphically via overlapping, in a form that can be integrated in other studies and databases, as well as to inform, raise awareness and responsibility for all the urban actors involved in the process such as residents, citizens, specialists (urban planners, landscape planners, architects, historians, anthropologists, etc.), the administration, decision makers, members of the general public, civil society representatives, and tourists.

A key element was drawing the attention of local and central administrations with regard to the aggression and reduction of the quantity and quality of the green areas and public spaces in Bucharest, as well as proposing a coherent metabolic system for green areas that can form a true green system, integrating the blue areas (waters, lakes, wetlands) and the yellow areas (agricultural fields, orchards, vineyards, pastures). Also, the study can be the basis of future laws and methodologies for elaborating urban planning and landscape documentation.

The research activities included:

• Research from specialized written sources (studies, research, books), in libraries, archives, and antique shops, but also with individuals and companies, and gathering documents regarding the missing gardens in the current central area of Bucharest

• Research from drawings and different iconographic sources (historical urban plans, images, sketches), as well as from other sources (engravings, pictures, watercolors, old photos) referring to the lost gardens of the capital’s central area

• Research through surveys conducted with specialists, residents, individuals, and companies regarding the adjacent areas and the lost gardens proposed to be the topic of study

• Analyzing and sorting the documentation according to the categories of information obtained until the present

• Cataloguing the information obtained up to the present according to typologies and categories of green areas

• Analyzing the current situation in the areas/subareas in which there were lost gardens, in order to highlight the current situation and presence of possible traces left in time

• Putting the information together and assembling it in drawn parts (plans)

• Completing the graphics and making several panels that were emphasized through several exhibition projects and by starting an interactive forum

• Organizing a public event and a roundtable to which specialists, members of the Romanian Academy, and professionals in the field (landscapers, urban planners, architects, geographers, anthropologists, historians, horticulturists), the local and national administration, as well as students, personalities from other professions, the general public, residents, and representatives of the mass media are invited (Pic. 2).

  Pic. 2

  

  The city of Bucharest: its system of parks, gardens, and waters in 1852. (Plan processed on the basis of historical information by Arch. Cerasella Crăciun and by urban planning and landscape studies student Andreea Nicoleta Bunea, on the basis of the Bucharest Plan by Major Baron Rudolf Artur Borroczyn at the request of ruler Barbu Dimitrie Stirbeiu)

The Selection of Sites for the Case Studies

After completion of the archival, literary, and anthropological research, the documentation, project, and plans were studied, as well as the works of art that represented images of old Bucharest (engravings, lithographs, paintings, watercolors), by using a multicriteria and transdisciplinary analysis which included related studies.

The examples of gardens that were researched and later on exhibited (included in the series of exhibitions; Crăciun 2011:9–19) were chosen because they are representative of the different types of landscape, now extinct, that have a decisive and important role at the level of the chronometabolism and within the complex historical system of green areas (Crăciun 2014b:92–97), such as the symbolic garden, the representative garden, the public/semi-public/private garden, the monastic garden, or the entertainment or leisure garden. The project ultimately aimed at developing a methodology to decrypt the types of gardens specific to the capital, as well as materializing it in measurable elements such as regional surveys and indices.

Various development stages of the historical landscape heritage were proposed as detailed research topics through this project. The first stage dealt with the research of the gardens in Bucharest’s current central area on the basis of old archival, historical, anthropological, and urban and landscape planning information with regard to the following gardens: Domneasca, Rasca, Baratiei, Sutu, Universala/Universitatii, Blanduziei, Otetelesanu, Gradina Cu Cai, and Union.

The Results of the Research and Conclusions

As a result of the transdisciplinary research, important conclusions were drawn with regard to the urban and landscape planning field, to the architecture and historical field, as well as to the social, community, and anthropological field. The study relied on archival information on several levels of research and finally achieved a study methodology for the landscape heritage, as well as a proposed typology of the lost gardens in the history of Bucharest which included the following categories: the typology of the symbolic garden, of the representative garden, of the public/semi-public/private garden, of the monastic garden, or of the entertainment or leisure garden.

The transdisciplinary research conducted is a type of continuous research subjected to a study based on the perpetual possibility of discovering new documentary and archival sources and old images related to these lost gardens, both from local and national sources, and also from European sources. These new sources may bring further clarification regarding important historical, urban, architectural, and landscape elements, but also social and anthropological (Crăciun 2009a, b:89–101) elements that can contribute to shaping the atmosphere of past ages (Pic. 3).

Pic. 3

The city of Bucharest: its system of parks, gardens, and waters in 1920. (Plan processed on the basis of historical information by Arch. PhD Cerasella Crăciun and by urban planning and landscape studies students Irina Luchian and Anca Ionescu, on the basis of the New Plan of the City of Bucharest, official edition, by Captain Mihail C. If. Pantea, from the Army General Staff)

Beyond the scientific research component, the project has found over time a special place in the consciousness of the residents and of the general public, revealing itself also to be a cultural and exhibition project, four exhibitions having been organized as a result of new archival information surfacing.

The main positive experiences during the implementation of the project refer to the interaction of the team with the urban actors and members involved, as well as finding new information and research sources in the landscape and natural heritage field.

The partners involved in the debates were members of the Faculty of Urbanism of the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, the Union of Romanian Architects, the Register of Romanian Urban Planners, and the Order of Architects of Romania as well as other university professors who study, research, or are interested in the field of landscape studies, urban planning, history, and anthropology, who contributed to the surveys made for research purposes in this study; members of the local administration involved in the field of heritage, environmental protection, and the management of green areas, who contributed to the analysis of the current situation and to providing data; the residents of the areas studied or those who in the past lived in the researched areas and who provided interesting information about those areas, as well as about the importance of the topic; NGOs and civil society representatives interested in the environment and the protection and preservation of green areas who were consulted during the drafting of the project.

From the results of the research supported by the exhibition projects we can mention the following.

• Signaling to the direct and indirect beneficiaries regarding the phenomenon of acute extinction of the cultural heritage, as well as regarding the decrease and degradation of the landscape, the green space, and the implications this phenomenon entails, both on the natural environment, on the microclimate specific to the capital, and on the level of the city’s health seen as an urban organism and on the health of its residents

• Raising awareness among all categories in the target group and the urban actors: members of the local and central public administration (decision makers), representatives of the civil society, higher education and research institutions, members of the Romanian Academy, and specialists (professionals and students in the fields of landscape planning, architecture and urbanism, horticulture, geography, history, anthropology, and so on)

• Creating a viable interface for ensuring communication between different generations (different age categories, students, teachers)

• Understanding the phenomenon of gradual historical and urban development, sometimes followed by irrecoverable losses such as those seen at the level of the landscape heritage and the decrease of green areas and implicitly of the metabolic urban phenomenon and of urban and human health (Pic. 4)

  Pic. 4

  

  The city of Bucharest: its system of parks, gardens, and waters in 1935–1938. (Plan processed on the basis of historical information by Arch. Cerasella Crăciun PhD and by urban planning and landscape studies students Irina Luchian, Irina Ciobanu, Eliza Georgescu, Iulia Sarb, on the basis of Bucharest’s Regulatory Plan)

The main achievements of the research conducted via the Lost Gardens project are:

• The materialization by means of this study of the acute need to perform integrated transdisciplinary research and studies in the field of landscape and natural heritage that are scarce or nonexistent at the moment, as well as the need to catalogue the historical information in archives and libraries regarding the historical evolution in the field of green areas and the natural, anthropogenic, and cultural landscape of the city of Bucharest

• Raising awareness among the population, among specialists, and among the administration regarding this type of landscape exercise

• Starting the interactive forum that led to the establishment of connections and new contacts, which in turn led to new information and important documents to research regarding the historical evolution of the research conducted, as well as supporting positive opinion trends in this sense

• The participation of local and national media in supporting the project

• A large number of visitors and participants in the exhibition, the roundtable, and the public debate that generated a discussion group with different urban actors

Apart from the gardens researched in the first stage, namely the Lost Gardens located in the central area of Bucharest: Rasca, Universitatii/Universala, Baratiei, Domneasca, Otetelesanu, Blanduziei, Gradina Cu Cai, Union, and Sutu, data regarding other gardens were also assessed (Bacalbasa 2013; Potra 1981; Iorga 2008; Stahl 2002; Harhoiu 2001; Majuru 2003; Zamani 2007; Dorin 2012).

The research continued with the Lost Gardens found in the area located in the vicinity of the city center, such as Procopoaia, Zdrafcu, Laptev, Gramont, Belvedere, Sarindari (Creanga), Sapte Nuci, Livedea Gospod, Varar, Mitropoliei, and Bellu.

The study may be completed by a different research stage of the lost gardens located in the old slums, initially found at the outskirts of Bucharest, but now a part of important urban areas, such as the following gardens: Orfeu, Scufa, Dudescului, Ivascu, Eliad, Grand, Campul Elefterie, Ateneului, Heliade, Grad Vilei Suter, Grad palatului Bragadiru, Gradinile taberelor de infanterie, Via Gherase, Grad Palatului Ghica, Gradina cu Tei, Gradina seminarului central, and therapeutic gardens of health areas (for the following hospitals: Filantropia, Odobleja, Military Hospital, the Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Colentina, etc.).

The research also uncovered information regarding many other lost gardens with an uncertain location from the existing historical plans, such as Gradina cu duzi, Gradina lui Matei, Gradina Frunzaresti, Gradina Rudenilor, Gradina Mavrocordatilor, Gradina Mavrogheni, Gradina Herasca, Gradina Banului Nicolae Brancoveanu, Gradina Boierului Vacarescu, Gradina Zugravului, Gradina Spirea, Gradina cu Tei, the gardens located northwest of Sf. Vineri Church, southwest of Olari Church, southwest of Delea Noua Church on the Boulevard Calea Rahovei, and so on.

Also, the project revealed possibilities of future development by the subsequent expansion in the area of the old ideal proposed by the Green Belt,⁶ in Ilfov County or in other areas of the country, where there are a large number of historical Romanian palace and mansion gardens.