WELCOME TO ROMANIA!

A simple guide to the unique beauty

of our country
POWERED BY COMENIUS

FUN FACTS THAT YOU

DIDNT KNOW ABOUT
ROMANIA

Romania has one of the
happiest cemeteries on Earth.
It is called Cimitirul vesel.
(Merry Cemetery)

Romania is the only
Romance language country in
Eastern Europe.

Romania has 7 UNESCO
Heritage Sites, such as The eight
Romanian Orthodox Churches
of Moldavia and the Danube
Delta.

Romania is Europes
richest country in gold
resources.

Palace of the Parliament
in Bucharest is the worlds
largest administrative building
and the second largest building
in the world after The Pentagon
in America.

Romania has the best
preserved delta in Europe.

Timioara was the first
city to be lit by electric street
lamps in Central Europe.

PLACES THAT
YOU MUST
VISIT
Romanian Athenaeum
(Ateneul Romn)
The Romanian Athenaeum
(Romanian: Ateneul
Romn) is a concert
hall in the center of
Bucharest, Romania
and a landmark
of the Romanian
capital city. Opened in
1888, the ornate, domed,
circular building is the citys main
concert hall and home of the
George Enescu Philharmonic
and of the George Enescu annual
international music festival.
The overall style is neoclassical,
with some more romantic touches.
In front of the building there
is a small park and a statue of
Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu.
Inside, the ground floor hosts an
ornate conference hall as large
as the auditorium above; the

auditorium
seats 600 in
the stalls and another 52
in loge seating.
A 75-sqm long and
3-m wide fresco
by Costin Petrescu
decorates the inside of the
circular wall of the concert
hall. Painted using the al fresco
technique, the piece depicts the
most important moments of
Romanian history, starting with
the conquest of Dacia by Roman
emperor Trajan and ending with
the realization of Greater Romania
in 1918.
Recognized as a symbol of
Romanian culture, the building
has been inscribed in 2007 on
the list of the Label of European
Heritage sites.

The Village Museum

The Village Museum is an openair ethnographic museum located in the
Herstru Park , showcasing traditional
Romanian village life. The museum
extends to over 100,000 m2, and
contains 272 authentic peasant farms
and houses from all over Romania.
It was created in 1936 by Dimitrie Gusti,
Victor Ion Popa, and Henri H. Stahl.
There are other village museums
throughout Romania, including ASTRA
National Museum Complex in Sibiu, and those of Cluj-Napoca,
Rmnicu-Vlcea and Timioara.
Moon Church-Oradea

The Church with Moon, built between 1784 and 1790 in
Baroque style with neoclassical influences is the Orthodox
Diocese Cathedral of Oradea. Its plans have were made by
the architect Eder Jakaband and the interior paintings
by the brothers Arsenie and Alexandru Teodorovici
and by Paul Murgu.
The church received this name due to
an unique mechanism in Europe,
located on the church tower, which
is intended to trigger a sphere with
a diameter of 3 meters, in form of a
moon, painted half black, half in gold.
The sphere moves in accordance with the
Moons rotation around the Earth and shows, by
its rotation, all the moons phases.

The Palace of Parliament

The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, is a multipurpose building containing both chambers of the Romanian
Parliament. According to the World Records Academy, the Palace
is the worlds largest civilian building with an administrative
function and the second largest building
in the world after The Pentagon in
America. Its also the most expensive
administrative building and heaviest
building.

The Palace was designed
by architect Anca Petrescu when
she was only 28 years old. It was
nearly completed by the Ceauescu
regime as the seat of political and
administrative power, though wiping out
a large section of the central city. The structure of the building,
and construction itself was planned at Proiect Bucureti the
main institution of Civil Engineering in
Bucharest. The chief of the project was
engineer Valentin Georgescu. Nicolae
Ceauescu named it the Peoples
House (Casa Poporului), also
known in English as the Peoples
Palace.

The Black Church

Located in the heart of Romania in

a nature of a rare beauty, Braov impresses

with its tumultuous history of 800 years.

The Black Church, the main tourist
attraction in the center of Braov, plays an
important role, being one of the most important and impressive monuments built by
the Transylvanian Saxons in their 850-year
history.

The name of Black Church has been
attributed to the main church of the Evangelical-Lutheran German in Braov after the catastrophic fire in 1689 which affected the whole town. Because of the flames and the smoke, the churchs walls
were blackened, but the luxury, the elegance and the grandeur of the church
could not be destroyed.

Pele Castle

Pele Castle is the most important touristic site of Sinaia city. Pele
Palace is one of the best maintained royal palaces in Europe. It was built
between 1875-1883. The cornerstone dates from the day of 22 August 1875 and
was put by the architects Doderer and I. Schultz.

It was the summer residence of King Charles I. After his death in
1914, Pele Castle was transformed into a museum. The exterior of the castle
is specific to the German Renaissance style; the 160 rooms have different
architectural styles (German, English and Italian Renaissance German
Baroque, Hispano-Moorish, French rococo).
The palaces construction and decoration works from the period 1873-1883
have cost about 6.5 million lei gold and the total costs until 1914 were about 16
million lei gold.
It should be noted that Pele Castle was
the first castle to have electric power in
Europe. This was possible because the
electricity was provided by its own power
plants, on the banks of river Pele. It
should also be mentioned that Pele is
hosting one of the most important and
most valuable collections of paintings in
Europe, summarizing about 2,000 pieces.

Vorone Monastery

The most famous church in Romania is the Church of St. Gheorghe of Vorone Monastery. With its exterior frescoes, with brightness and very intense colours, as well for the hundreds of characters
preserved on the azure painting, the church
impresses anyone passes its threshold.

Situated on the bank of a river, at
the end of a large village with the same
name, near the town of Gura Humorului, the monastic settlement Vorone
has an unknown age. According to
the legend of Stefan cel Mare, following victory against the Turkish, he
built a new church dedicated to Saint
Gheorghe, patron of victory in the battle.
The researcher George Bal wrote in 1920
that this monastic settlement, like those built
in the next century, are Byzantine churches built with Gothic hands.
In this sense, the structure and interior solutions refer to the Byzantine tradition and the South Slavs.
Vulturul Negru Palace

Vulturul Negru Palace (The Black Eagle Palace) is
considered to be an architectural jewel of Oradea. The
central motif is represented by a stressed body, divided
into two parts, which end in trilobite attic with a
stained glass in the eardrum. Stained glass with
the black eagle became an emblem of the
complex and was executed in 1909, in Neumann
K. workshop.

The Black Eagle Palace is the most
important building of this style of Oradea.
The building is multifunctional, comprising at
inauguration time, casino, hotel, offices, restaurant,
grouped into three asymmetrical bodies. Today in the
building functions a hotel, a cinema, three clubs, a few
shops and a bank.

OUR LOVELY FOOD

Romanian Polenta (Mmlig)

Mmlig is the name of a food made from boiled corn meal
similar to polenta. Traditionally, cornmeal is used to be cooked in salty
water in a cast iron cauldron. Layers of cheese added to
the cooked cornmeal and a sour cream topping make
this specialty a delicious entre or side dish.

Romanian Wee Ones Sausages (Mititei)

The story has it a popular mid-19th-century
Romanian inn, famous for its
sausages, was out of a customer
favorite. To save time, the chef formed the
unstuffed meat mixture into sausage-shaped
cylinders and grilled them over charcoal. The
customers delighted in the wee ones without
skin, and so these casingless sausages became
known as mititei or the wee ones.
Cabbage rolls (Sarmale)

Cabbage rolls are made of
ground meat (usually pork, but
also beef, sheep, poultry, or
even fish) mixed with rice and
other ingredients and rolled
into cabbage leaves. In some
regions cabbage rolls are served
with cooked corn meal and sour
cream. This specialty is known under
the same name sarmale in Turkey,
Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Palestine,
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Greece and the Republic of Moldova as well.

ROMANIAN TRADITIONS

Saint Nicholas

Dont you just love Christmas morning, when you wake up so
early in the morning and run to the Christmas tree, to see what Santa
brought you? In Romania, we have two Santas who
bring us presents: one is Santa Claus, which everyone in the world knows, and the other one is
Santa Nicholas, who leaves the presents in our
bootsbut only if we were good! Tradition
says they all have to clean their boots and put
them at the door, so Santa will come and drop
the sweets in their boots.

Easter eggs

The Thursday before the Easter
is
called the Great Thursday, the Thursday of sufferings or the black Thursday. Most of the women
paint the eggs on the Great Thursday. In Walachia the eggs are painted on Wednesday and
taken to the church on Thursday.

Carols

On Christmas day, children and grown-ups alike
wander around, singing carols.
They may come from all over the
country, for instance from central
and southern Transylvania, Crisana and sometimes from Banat.
Traditionally, they perform their
carols wearing masks.

COME TO
ROMANIA! WE
ARE WAITING
FOR YOU!

This project has been

funded with support from
the European Commission. This publication
reflects the views only of
the author, and the Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use
which may be made of the
information contained
therein.