Rutland columnist Allan Grey shares details of a recent trip to Romania
If you wondered where I’ve been for the last few weeks, and you were perhaps even missing me already, unlikely I know, I can tell you now, writes Rutland columnist Allan Grey.
Having enjoyed my tour of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia this time last year, I decided to take a similar group tour to Romania. Why Romania you ask? Quite simply, Romania is a country with much history, and although I had stepped foot on Romanian soil at Constanta during a Black Sea cruise back in 2009, I knew little of its geography and less of its history.
Romania's history is marked by Dacian and Roman heritage, followed by waves of migrations and the emergence of medieval principalities like Moldavia and Wallachia. The unification of Moldavia and Wallachia formed modern Romania in 1859, followed by independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, and the formation of "Greater Romania" after the First World War. A period of communist rule followed the Second World War under the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu with the Romanian Revolution of 1989 ushering in a transition to democracy and a market economy.
Most of us have heard of Transylvania, a principality within Romania, as the home of Dracula, and more specifically the location of the rather sombre Bran Castle, but it pains me to say that a bit like Santa Claus, Dracula is a fictitious character, a legend, a myth even. One real but rather unpleasant chap however, was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and who went by the name Vlad Tepes, better known as Vlad the Impaler. He was Voivode, or Governor of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1477 and is regarded as a hero in Romania due to his opposition to the Ottoman Empire.
It was during this period of rule that he committed the atrocities for which he was best known, a penchant for impaling his enemies on stakes in the ground and leaving them to die thus earning him his ‘nom de guerre’, Vlad the Impaler. The beautiful town of Sighisoara was his home, a well-preserved citadel, a Unesco World Heritage site and one of Europe's best-preserved, inhabited medieval fortresses.
During our tour through Transylvania we visited a small village named Viscri, where to my surprise I learned that our beloved King Charles III owns a restored 18th Century Saxon house which he’d purchased in 2006. The ‘King’s House’, open to tourists, serves as a public exhibition space, filled with beautiful art displays, showcasing Charles’s passion for traditional architecture, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and cultural heritage.
Many people in the UK will be unaware of the love King Charles has for Romania, and Transylvania in particular. Always an advocate for tradition in architecture and the environment as Prince Charles, he became aware of ‘systemisation’, a plan that Ceaușescu had formulated, comprising no less than the destruction of thousands of Romanian villages, a veritable architectural blitzkrieg, to be followed by a forced nationwide resettlement of the rural population to new industrial towns. This was anathema to the English Royal Family, and especially the young Prince, and early in 1989 he launched a tirade against Ceaușescu, writing to the then Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe saying that Ceaușescu’s plans were diabolical and that the situation in Romania was urgent. Things moved very slowly, and so later that year in a speech, Charles made a full frontal assault on Ceaușescu, saying that he found it difficult to remain quiet whilst old traditions and ancient buildings were to be bulldozed to make way for ‘mock modernity’. However, within months of Charles’s speech, on Christmas Day 1989, Ceaușescu was overthrown and executed, and systemisation was put on hold.
Nonetheless, Prince Charles’s interest continued, and he visited Romania for the first time in 1993, and it is believed he has been back every year since, from 2006 staying at the King’s House in Viscri; we even had a good look inside the royal bedroom, and from what I could see it was nearly as comfortable as mine.
Something special was reserved for the final day of our tour, a visit to the Palace of the Parliament. One of the three largest buildings in the world, Bucharest’s Palace of the Parliament was conceived by Nicolae Ceaușescu and stands as the world's heaviest building, weighing over four million tonnes. At its highest, it stands 70 metres above ground level and reaches 90 metres down below ground, providing amongst other facilities, shelter from nuclear oblivion. Construction was started in 1982, taking 14 years to complete, a project that Ceaușescu, having lost his head in 1989, was not around to see completed.
It was constructed with vast quantities of steel, marble and crystal, the palace showcasing both architectural ambition and authoritarian excess. We visited the seat of the Romanian parliament and the many hallways, arcades and concert halls contained within the building, but a full tour of the palace would need another week at least.
One amusing anecdote is the visit of Michael Jackson in 1992, four years before the completion of the palace, and rather than Ceaușescu, became the first person to stand on the balcony of the Palace of the Parliament and address the adoring crowds standing below.
The story goes that he had been touring, with a large number of concerts in Europe, was somewhat fatigued and had forgotten quite where he was, shouting to the crowd below: “I love you all, I love Budapest.” The massive crowd forgave him, where I suspect they would have been a little less generous had he been a politician.