Peles Castle

Located on Peles brook valley, on the spot named Pietrele Arse (the Burnt Stones), the Peles Castle, the most famous royal residence in Romania, was built between 1875 and 1883 - when it was officially opened.
It is said that sometime in august 1866 king Carol I arrived in the neighborhood, and spent the night at the monastery of Podul Neagului (as Sinaia was known at that time). He liked so much the wild and picturesque landscapes that he decided to built here a castle. So he bought the land in 1872, and then hired the German architect Wilhelm Dodderer to make the plans for the construction. That is why, in what concerns the exterior architecture, the main elements are specific to the German neo-renaissance style.

Pelisor Castle - Sinaia.
As a matter-of-fact, the construction began in 1873, but the basement of the castle dates from 1875. After its official opening in 1883, some development plans followed, the present shape of the building being finished in 1914. Mainly it is about some buildings that were annexed, like Camerele Gardianului (the Guardian’s Rooms), Economatul (the Bursarship), Foisorul (the Foisor Hunting Chateau) (the hunting house), Grajdurile Regale (the Royal Stables) and the Power Station. Over 300 craftsmen, from all over the world, worked here during this period.)

Queen Maria’s Bedroom - Pelisor.
Between 1889 and 1903, architect Karel Liman, who was in charge of the construction, built Pelisor Chateau - a modern and smaller replica of the main building - the residence of King Ferdinand I of Romania and of Queen Mary. The royal couple also lived in the Foisor Hunting Chateau for a while, building that was destroyed in a fire and was rebuilt again in 1933. A brief estimation shows that between 1875 and 1914 there were spent over 16 million golden lei for Peles.

Peles Castle - The Entrance Hall
Valuable collections and a secret door
Both, at the end of the 19th century and nowadays, the Peles Castle was and is considered to be one of the most beautiful castles in Europe, and the first to be entirely electrified on the continent. Its own power station was located on the bank of Peles Brook. Otherwise, the building had, even at that time, an interior elevator, vacuum cleaner and central-heating system. The castle has 170 rooms, out of which only 10 can be visited by tourists, and shelters various valuable collections of paintings, sculptures, armours, carpets, furniture, tapestries, statues, potteries, gold, silver and china dishes, stained-glasses.
The Entrance Hall is magnificent, with walnut tree carvings, covered with bas-reliefs and statuettes. The movable glass ceiling, activated by an electric engine or by a manual system, was a surprise element for the king’s visitors, who could admire the sky on cloudless summer nights.
The rooms included in the touristic circuit have suggestive names, like Sala Maura (the Moorish Salon), the Florentine Room, the Columns Room, the Music Room, and the Armoury.

Peles Castle - The armouries.
The Royal library attracts especially those who are keen on rare books, with leather covers engraved with golden letters. There is an attraction point even for those who are not familiar with the universe of books, namely the secret door, a way of access behind a book shelf through which the king could becalm in various rooms of the Castle.
The armouries, arranged between 1903 and 1906, shelter more than 4000 European and Eastern pieces from the 14th and 17 centuries. The most valuable are considered to be the German armours from the 16th and 17th centuries and a complete armour for horse and knight, unique in Romania.
The Music Room became a musical soirée salon at Queen Elisabeth’s wish. The furniture from this room was a gift from the Maharajah of Kapurthala.

Peles Castle - Maura Salon.
The Florentine Room, also called the Great Salon, impresses with its ceiling sculptured out of linden trees, gilded, with two great chandeliers, and its ornaments in the Italian neo-renaissance style.
Maura Salon is the work of architect Charles Lecompte de Nouy, having Spanish-Moorish elements and an indoor Carrara marble fountain, replica of a similar piece in Cairo.
The Playhouse has 60 seats and a royal box, being decorated in Louis XIV style.
At first floor there is the Concert Room, arranged in 1906, where one can find a harpsichord made in 1621 at Antwerp, a Bluthner piano with vertical tail and a Rieger organ with two keyboards.
The Imperial Suite was also arranged in 1906, for the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef, invited at King’s Carol I celebration of 40 years of reign.

Peles Castle - Concert Room.
Other rooms that offer the tourists various surprises are: the Council Room, which resembles one of the rooms of the mayoralty in Lucerne – Switzerland; the Work Cabinet where there is an imposing writing table and also an audience desk; the Dining Room, where there are exhibited some very valuable silver pieces, is at the first floor and has a rustic, Briton furniture from the 18th century; The Turkish Parlor which shelters a collection of Turkish and Persian brass pots; the Bedroom which is lighted by a Bohemia crystal chandelier.
The stained glasses from Peles Castle were bought and set up between 1883 and 1914, most of them being brought from Switzerland and Germany, dating from the 15th and 17th centuries. The castle also has seven terraces decorated with stone sculptures, fountains and Carrara marble decorative pots.

Peles Castle - The Dining Room.
After the Bran Castle, Peles Castle is considered to be the second most visited museum in the country. Only in 2006 there were over 250 000 visitors from our country and also from USA, Australia, Japan and New Zeeland. The importance of the castle is also underlined by the existing security measures: military guards, supervisors and video cameras.
In March 2007 the Romanian Government gave back the Peles castle and Pelisor Chateau and the afferent lands to the Royal Family. Then, after a memorandum signed by the representatives of the Royal House and of the Government, it was agreed that the Peles Castle and the Foisor Hunting Chateau remained “forever”, as museums, in the property of the Romanian state.

Peles Castle - Sinaia.
Bugaboo for Ceausescu family
A story famous in the 80s said that the Ceausescu would have liked to have a protocol residence at Peles (the building was closed for the public between 1975 and 1990). Because it was well known that they had the habit of ordering all kinds of demolishing and renovations, the persons in charge of the museum scared them by saying that inside the Castle there is a fungus that attacked the wood and that it was very dangerous for man’s health. The truth is that there was indeed a fungus that affected the girders of the building because of the dampness and lack of airing. Cautious, Ceausescu husband and wife spent only one night at the Castle, sleeping in the Foisor. That is the reason why they started the restoration works, the resistance structure from the Honor Hall and the ground floor dining room being replaced.
It is also said that Elena Ceausescu was the one who ordered the six pillows embroidered in silver and gold for the castle. At that time, the value of one pillow was that of a Dacia car, meaning 70 000 old lei.

Peles Castle - Sinaia.
How to get there?
Castelul Peles (the Peles Castle) is located in Sinaia (44 kilometers far from Brasov and 122 kilometers far from Bucharest), and one can choose between the European road E60 and the national road DN1. In what concerns the railway, there are many trains that go from Ploiesti to the Valea Prahovei (Prahova Valley), and Sinaia Resort is one of the destinations.
Visitors receive an extensive tour of the rooms at the ground and first floor, with guide in five foreign languages. On November, Castelul Peles (the Peles Castle) is closed for general cleaning.

ARGES MONASTERY

The Episcopal Church, or the Monastery of Curtea de Arges, was founded by prince Neagoe Basarab between 1514-1517, on the site of a metropolitan church which had been raised in the 14th century and acknowledged by the Archbishopric of Constantinople in 1359.The legend has it that one day, a very wealthy and religious Wallachian prince, the Black Prince, rode with nine masons and their master Manole to find a place and build a church more beautiful than anyone may have seen before. The masons started to work, but whenever they reached to the top, the walls would colapse before they could ever finish it. They decided that the first human being they would lay their eyes upon was to be sacrificed in order to see their work done. And it so happened the Manole 's wife showed up to bring her husband's lunch, so that he had to keep his vow and immure his own wife alive within the church walls. The place of this immolation can still be seen between two walls of the southern front side of the church. This is how the monastery could be finished, and the prince was pleased to find that it was as beautiful as it could be. But the prince would not want Manole to build another church that could match his own. So he ordered the scaffolding removed, which left Manole stranded on the roof. In an attempt to escape, Manole made himself a pair of wings from shingles, but they were of no avail, and he would crash to the ground like Icarus and die. Upon his crash, on that very spot, a spring would gush forth, which is now called Manole's well. Today people would throw coins in its basin, to make their wishes come true.
Indeed Neagoe Basarab (1512-1521) would be known in history as the Black Prince, and it is a real fact that the church master builder's name whom he had brought from Nicosia was Manole. Again it is no less true that the prince himself supervised the construction of the monastery all the way, from the beginning to the end. The church one can see today is not Manole's original creation of 1517, but a recreation of 1875-1876 by the Frenchman Lecomte de Nouy, who grafted on all the pseudo-moorish accretions.
Like with so many other cultural sites of the world, at Curtea de Arges Monastery legend and truth intermingle and form up an inseparable whole, lending a special flavour to the flow of historic facts and figures.
The Monastery Curtea de Arges, built in Albesti stone along with marble and mosaic brought from Constantinople by Neagoe Basarab (1512-1521), has the classical harmonious aspect of an Orthodox church: the pronaos (also a necropolis), the nave and the altar have a peculiar architecture and rich ornaments: a boxy structure enlivened by whorls, rosettes and fancy trimmings rise into two octogonal belfries, each having eight narrow windows frames, each festooned with little spheres and the three armed cross of Orthodoxy. The roofs of the four belfries seem to have been made by a goldsmith, whereas the chains which support the crosses seem to be large pieces of jewelry.
A belt carved in stone as a rope twisted in four goes all around the church dividing its exterior walls into two sides, namely the lower side, decorated with rectangular tall panels framed in carved stone, with narrow windows, and the upper side, with a range of largely opened arches which encircle the church. The decorations of the disks which link the arches have Arabian, Persian and Georgian motifs, in green, in blue and golden colours.
Prince Neagoe Basarab died before he saw his "temple" finished. His son-in-law Radu from Afumati (1522-1529) took over and brought Dobromir of Targoviste to paint the interior walls (1526). Unfortunately, the paintings restored in 1875 by Emile Lecomte de Nouy's brother are inferior to the original ones. Fragments of the genuine frescoes made by Dobromir can still be seen at the Art Museum and at the National Museum of History in Bucharest.
Along time, the church was successively damaged by wars, plundering, earthquakes, fires and was restored during the rules of Princes Matei Basarab (1632-1654), Serban Cantacuzino (1678-1688) and Bishop Iosif Sevastis at the end of the 18th century.
Whatever the patrons and artists who designed this church, it remains impressive by its votive paintings, by its marble gilted bronze, by its onyx iconostasis, by its twelve columns with floral ornaments representing the twelve apostles. In the pronaos there are the tombs of its founders, Neagoe Basarab and Radu from Afumati, as well as of the first couples of Romanian kings and queens (Carol I and Elisabeta, Ferdinand and Maria) which render this church not only a princely, but also a royal necropolis, alongside a splendid monument of Romanian art and history.
The white marble tombstones of Carol 1 (1839-1914) and his poet wife Elizabeth 1853-1916) lie on the right in the monastery`s pronaos (entrance hall). On the left of the entrance are the tombstones of King Ferdinand 1(1856-1927) and the British-born Queen Marie (1875-1938) whose heart, upon her request, was put in a gold casket and buried in her favourite palace in Balcic in southern Dobrogea. Folowing the ceding of southern Dobrogea to Bulgaria in 1940, however, her heart was moved to a marble tomb in Bran. Neagoe Basarab and his wife Stina are also buried in the pronaos.
In the park opposite lies the legendary Manole`s Well (Fintina lui Manole). Legend has it that Manole tried - and failed - to fly from the monastery roof when his master Neagoe, removed the scaffolding to prevent him building a more beautiful structure for anyone else. The natural spring marks his supossed landing pad.
The Old Princely ChurchThe saint patron of the chapel is "The Saint & Martyr Filofteia" who has been protecting the monastery for 8 centuries and whose relics are inside the Episcopal Cathedral. In 1517, the canonization of Saint & Hierarch Nifon, The Patriarch of Constantinopole, the Metropolitan of Wallahia took place here.
This is also the place where the relics of the Saint Nifon are preserved in a coffin made of silver and plated with gold. The Saint’s head and hands represent a present got by Neagoe Basarab from the monks who live in The Athos Mountains. There is also a coffin with the relics of the Saint Serghie, Vach and Saint Martyr Tatiana.