Halfway down the Danube

A little sad, the staircase

I was downtown today for a lunch meeting -- yeah yeah, Saturday, don't ask -- and afterwards I had an hour or so free.

The History and Art Museum of the Municipality of Bucharest was right across the street. (It's just off Piatsa Universitate.) I had walked past it a dozen times and never thought it very interesting. I guess the title had turned me off. Maybe it's hard to get excited about anything that contains the word "municipality". But this time, on a whim, I crossed the Piatsa and went inside.

Here's where I stop and say: visit this museum. If you're in Bucharest, and you're near Piatsa Universitate, take half an hour and do it.

Why? Well, it's not the collections. Though I suppose I should describe them. There's a modern art exhibit on the ground floor, which is pretty forgettable. Upstairs, there are modest exhibits of Neolithic and Roman remains. Nothing amazing there either. There is a nice suit of armor, and a sword that belonged to Brancoveanu.

Things pick up in the next room, when the visitor reaches the 18th and 19th centuries; lots of cool old books, very beautiful, and paintings and pictures of the city from back then.

-- No, actually that got pretty interesting. There was a painting of the Great Fire of 1832, when most of the city burned down. I never knew that even happened. But there was the fire, and lots of very upset looking guys in fancy uniforms on horseback waving swords at it. Kinda cool.

And then the collection got downright intriguing when it reached the late 19th and early 20th centuries: old street signs and adddress plates, the public water pumps that stood in crowded neighborhoods before running water came into the houses, the gas lamps that used to adorn the whole city.

Then, probably the high point of the collection: The old office of the Mayor of Bucharest. Complete with 1890s telephone handset, wood-and-leather swivel chair, massive clawfoot desk, and the Mayor's ceremonial regalia in a glass case. (When did Mayors stop wearing ceremonial regalia? A hundred years ago, the Mayor of Bucharest looked like Sergeant Pepper... and that was a good thing.)

There were also a lot of old maps, which is always nice. Our part of town, up around Piatsa Dorobants? In 1916 it was the edge of the city. There was a "Velodrome" just north of us -- I think that was for bicycle racing -- and a big orchard started just on the other side of what's now Strada Washington. Across the street from us stands a house that was built in 1896; as recently as 1918, that house was standing near the edge of that orchard, with not much but countryside beyond it.

The neighborhood we live in was laid out in the 1920s, the streets named after the capitals of friendly countries -- Strada Paris, Strada Londra, Strada Bruxelles, Brasilia, Roma... actually, come to think of it, I believe the streets were named after countries that were Romania's allies in the First World War. Huh. I never realized that before, but it fits.

Anyhow. The exhibits, taken as a whole, are pretty good. But if the exhibits were all, I'd be only mildly enthusiastic. There are only half a dozen or so rooms; at least half of the building seems to be closed, presumably for lack of money. So it's not going to keep a visitor occupied for more than half an hour, tops. There are no labels in English, and even the Romanian labels are pretty skimpy. And the exhibits stop in 1941... just as things were getting interesting. There's absolutely nothing about Bucharest in wartime or under Communism.

So why do I say you must see this museum? Because of the staircase.

The Museum occupies the Sutu Palace, which is a neoclassical townhouse built for the Sutu family in 1835. From the outside, the Palace is architecturally nice enough -- there's a particularly good ironwork awning around the door -- but nothing too amazing.

But when you step inside...

The staircase is two stories high, and it faces you as you walk in the door. It goes up from the ground floor, splits in two and does a dramatic double loop backwards. It's rather steep.

It is made of black iron with rivets, like a Victorian railway bridge. But the stairs and risers are wood -- some sort of dark hardwood, long since polished to a brown glow. The banisters are wood too, smoothed to a sheen by generations of hands. They would be perfect for sliding down -- steep, slippery, dangerous.

At the first floor landing there is a mirror. The mirror is about twelve feet wide and fifteen feet tall. It's the original; the Sutus ordered it specially from Vienna. It's Merano glass and doesn't look a day old.

Reflected in the mirror is a large clock face. The clock hangs from a balcony on the upper floor. The reflected clock tells the correct time, because the real clock is reversed -- it's a mirror image clock, with the numbers and the hands going backwards. The Sutus had that ordered specially from Paris.

Walk up the staircase, and you're in a sort of atrium. You've turned 360 degrees; the clock hangs below you, the mirror is in front of you, and you're looking down into the staircase. Twenty feet above your head is a very high domed ceiling. Around it, four windows let light into the atrium. The glass in the windows is stained, so colored patterns of light fall across the walls.

In the dark corners of the atrium stand four massive 19th century coal heaters.They are dull green except for their doors, which are some reddish metal -- copper or bronze. Their ceramic surfaces are decorated with frowning Greek masks.

The total effect is... quite something. I walked up and down the staircase several times, and then stood at the top for a few minutes, just trying to imagine being a child in this place. How wonderful, I thought, how great, how absolutely cool it must have been, to be a kid here. To play on that staircase. To read a book huddled next to the monstrous glowering coal heaters in the winter, or in summer to watch the colored patches of sunlight strike wild reflections from the mirror. To contemplate the great backwards clock. To have that staircase to yourself.

But then I found out: the Sutus never had any children. They were very rich, and they were famous for their parties and balls, and they were active in politics and the arts, and they lived in that house for more than 40 years. But when they died, they left it to the city. It became the Mayor's office for many years and then, eventually, a museum.

So: no child had ever claimed that atrium as her private playground or reading space. And no child had ever slid down the wonderful, smooth, deliriously dangerous bannisters.

It seemed a little sad, somehow.

(The Museum is at #2, Bratianu Blvd, just south of Piatsa Universitate. Admission is 25,000 lei, or about 75 cents.)

Posted by douglas at March 13, 2004 09:44 PM