PERIPHERY AND PICTURESQUE OUTSKIRTS IN THE BUCHAREST OF MODERN TIMES
PERIPHERY AND PICTURESQUE OUTSKIRTS IN THE BUCHAREST OF MODERN TIMES

Summary/Abstract: Purlieu and picturesque - here are two terms Bucharest has combined in an original manner, during the modern epoch, from the point of view of the urban environment, and also in respect of the private and public life, involving the people, with their daily concerns, with their often unfullfilled strivings, their feelings’ frustrations, ambitions, with their small failures a.s.o. What did Bucharest look like, within its normal discrepancies generated by too hasty an imitation of the Western urban patterns? The town was developing as an “enraged, picturesque chaos”. The contrast between the village-looking purlieus with the decaying Lipscani area, on one hand, and the luxury of the superrefined part, the axis of wich was Calea Mogosoaiei (called Calea Victoriei, after the 1877 Independence war) was, by the middle of the last century, the most charming peculiarly to the passers-by.

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