Planning Capital Cities

Monica Sebestyen

Urban image and national representation: Bucharest in the 19th and

the beginning of the 20th century

The paper aims to investigate the preoccupation for the urban aesthetic in
the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in Bucharest, focusing
mainly on the creation of the boulevards and squares and on the erection of
public monuments. These interventions that shaped the modern capital city
are linked to the broader context of the nation building process.

After the unification and independence in the 19th century, Bucharest becomes
the capital of both Moldavia and Wallachia. The population is rapidly growing
and the construction activities reach an unprecedented scale. In this context,
for the first time in Romania, the preoccupation for the urban aesthetic
appears. The avenues no longer have only a functional purpose, but they
become important public spaces that define the image of the city and that also
represent the nation. It is a defining period in the city’s evolution, when the city
gains its urban character and the main boulevards and squares are shaped. This
transformation is common to many other European capitals, that undergone
through similar processes, many of them following the Parisian example.

The sculptures in the newly formed squares also contribute to this new image.
The apparition of the public sculpture in Romania coincides with the rise of the
nationalism and the creation of the national state. It was a common practice
in the countries which gained independence during the 19th century to place
statues of national heroes in the public squares. The public space is transformed
in what Eric Hobsbawm calls “an open-air museum of national history as seen
through great men”. The role of these sculptures is to foster the national feeling
in a century in which each new nation was struggling to affirm its identity. At
the same time, they are also having a visual function, to dominate the newly
created boulevards and squares of the city which is entering the modernity.

Following these directions, the paper investigates further the complex relation
between urban aesthetic and national representation.

Abstracts