Halfway down the Danube

The Mogosoaia pavement

There used to be a lot more trees around here.

Bucharest sits on an almost perfectly flat plain, about 40 miles or 70 km north of the Danube. Get out of the city and it's just flat, empty fields stretching away to the horizon.

But it wasn't always like that. A few centuries back, the plains between the Carpathians and the Danube were a mixture of forest and prairie. North of Bucharest, it was mostly forest -- oaks and beech and maple. South and west of the city, the ground was more open, but there were still stands of trees mixed in with the sea of grass. It was a savannah rather than a steppe.

I didn't realize this at first. Certainly you'd never guess it from looking at southern Muntenia (the region around Bucharest) today. To quote myself:

...an absolutely flat plain. Fields of straggly, unhealthy looking corn alternated with fields of sunflowers. Miles away in the distance, at the edge of vision, a line of cypress trees marched against the horizon.

And that was all. There were no roads. No towns. No grain elevators. I looked in all directions but I couldn't see... anything. Just absolutely flat land, stretching to the horizon. Withered-looking corn, millions of sunflowers. And the cypress trees far, far away.

I remember looking at an old 19th century map in the Museum of Bucharest and being surprised to see a few little "forest" markers scattered around the city to the north and east.

But I did some digging and, sure enough. This region has been deforested down to bare grasslands, but that's historically quite recent. In fact, most of the deforestation happened in the last 150 years. Before that, there was first-growth forest within walking distance of Bucharest.

And then there was the Podul Mogosoaiei.

Some time back, we visited Mogosoaia, the old palace of Prince Constantin Brancoveanu. So I knew that Mogosoaia was a lovely old building by a lake, about 20 km (12 miles) outside of Bucharest.

What I didn't know was that Prince Brancoveanu had built Romania's first paved road. It reached from the center of Bucharest -- which was just a small town of a few thousand people then -- to the palace by the lake.

And it was made of wood.

Brancoveanu's men cut down thousands of oak trees and used them to make the new road. It was called the Podul Mogosoaiei, because it was paved, or floored (podit) with oak beams. It ran through farms, vineyards and orchards for 20 km, paved all the way, to the center of Bucharest.

It wasn't perfectly straight -- apparently Brancoveanu made a point of running it right through the estate of one Constantin Balaceanu, a political rival who was favored by the Austrians as a candidate for the princely throne. But it was not only the first paved road in Romania, it was the most impressive thing for hundreds of miles in any direction. (It was started in 1692 and finished sometime around 1700. The whole region was part of the Ottoman sphere. And the Ottomans were far down the road of decadence, so there weren't a lot of great construction works.) For the next century or so, the Podul was famous around the region, and a point of pride for Bucharesters.

Eventually, the 19th century came along, and Bucharest grew more modern. In spring, when the water was high, flatboats could come up the Dimbovita from the Danube, bringing stones to pave the streets. The Podul was resurfaced, first with cobblestones, and later with asphalt. And in 1878, after Romania's successful war against the Turks, it was renamed Calea Victoriei, the great Way of Victory.

Calea Victoriei still runs north and west from the center of Bucharest. It's a busy road now, full of cars. It passes just a few blocks from our house.

Oak is a tough wood, and can last for centuries. The forests of Muntenia are gone, yes. But a few feet under the asphalt of Calea Victoriei, the huge oak beams of the Podul Mogosoaiei are probably still sleeping in the earth.

Posted by douglas at May 13, 2005 11:01 PM