Transylvania is really quite pretty, and deserves to be better known as a tourist destination really. Its quite easy to get around and because Romanian is far easier to deal with than the surrounding languages for a person with some French or Italian shopping and ordering food is much easier than Bulgaria or Hungary.
The Carpathian mountains are nice to look at and relatively easy to avoid having to go through too much. The rolling hills do slow down cars and trains, but are far more interesting than the great plains of some of the neighbouring areas. Bucharest is quite cool to visit, but the surrounding areas isn't just flat, it's also more or less empty of anything much interesting to look at.
I've mentioned in the previous post about how it is loaded with the remains of military architecture. Well it's equally stacked if you are into churches. There are large numbers of adherents of Romanian Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran religion, as well as a few smaller branches, and each village tends to have a church in more than one of the flavours, most often all three. Since the building traditions and interior decorating for each is wildly different it adds a variety not found in areas of Europe where the winners of the Wars of Religion imposed far more uniformity.
The Lutheran churches are the ones Alison and I prefer aesthetically. They are basically identical to their North German and Scandinavian models, with quite stripped back interiors. I kept thinking that their steeples are taller than I'm used to though.
The Catholic ones are generally like French ones (nothing too Baroque or Rococo) except for the ones that changed affiliation and lost their decoration during their protestant phases. (Cluj cathedral went from pre-reformation Catholic, through Lutheran, Calvinist, Unitarian and back to Catholic again). Again, there seems to be an emphasis on height.
The Romanian Orthodox are in the standard Orthodox tradition. Generally a Greek cross floor plan rather than a nave and topped with domes. Many of them are considerably taller than they are wide, which leads to a sort of reverse vertigo in the biggest ones -- they are just too tall to be pleasant.
I wonder if the height of the local Lutheran and Catholic spires and naves isn't at least in part a response to these enormously tall competing buildings being built across town from them.
The interiors of the Orthodox are all much more heavily decorated than any western church. Icons are present in large numbers, and believers pray in front of them as a matter of course (often giving them a kiss on the way out). The very best ones are covered entirely in highly coloured pictures on every flat surface (usually saints rather than scenes from the bible). Alison and I had seen Orthodox churches in the Baltic, but these are much more decorated.
The Romanian Orthodox was favoured by the Romanian Communists relative to the other religions, although any genuinely religious clergy faced repression. It therefore came out of that era much wealthier than the other churches and they seem determined to show it. Cluj has a monstrous new cathedral being built which seems far larger than anything it could actually need.
But the most dramatic is the cathedral being built in Bucharest. This new church, which is near completion will be the largest Orthodox church in the world (currently the holder is one in Moscow which is so heavy it is sinking into the ground). Vast doesn't begin to cover it.
Amusingly it is behind Ceausescu's ridiculously large "Palace of the People" (the second largest administrative building in the world, behind the pentagon, and a ridiculous white elephant). Well, many people don't think it particularly amusing, including quite a few Romanians, because it is just too big and expensive to be justified in any reasonable way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_People%27s_Salvation_Cathedral
The Carpathian mountains are nice to look at and relatively easy to avoid having to go through too much. The rolling hills do slow down cars and trains, but are far more interesting than the great plains of some of the neighbouring areas. Bucharest is quite cool to visit, but the surrounding areas isn't just flat, it's also more or less empty of anything much interesting to look at.
I've mentioned in the previous post about how it is loaded with the remains of military architecture. Well it's equally stacked if you are into churches. There are large numbers of adherents of Romanian Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran religion, as well as a few smaller branches, and each village tends to have a church in more than one of the flavours, most often all three. Since the building traditions and interior decorating for each is wildly different it adds a variety not found in areas of Europe where the winners of the Wars of Religion imposed far more uniformity.
The Lutheran churches are the ones Alison and I prefer aesthetically. They are basically identical to their North German and Scandinavian models, with quite stripped back interiors. I kept thinking that their steeples are taller than I'm used to though.
The Catholic ones are generally like French ones (nothing too Baroque or Rococo) except for the ones that changed affiliation and lost their decoration during their protestant phases. (Cluj cathedral went from pre-reformation Catholic, through Lutheran, Calvinist, Unitarian and back to Catholic again). Again, there seems to be an emphasis on height.
Cluj Catholic Cathedral. That is one tall nave.
The Romanian Orthodox are in the standard Orthodox tradition. Generally a Greek cross floor plan rather than a nave and topped with domes. Many of them are considerably taller than they are wide, which leads to a sort of reverse vertigo in the biggest ones -- they are just too tall to be pleasant.
Cluj Orthodox Cathedral. The central dome and pillared support
would be a decent church height in its own right.
I wonder if the height of the local Lutheran and Catholic spires and naves isn't at least in part a response to these enormously tall competing buildings being built across town from them.
The interiors of the Orthodox are all much more heavily decorated than any western church. Icons are present in large numbers, and believers pray in front of them as a matter of course (often giving them a kiss on the way out). The very best ones are covered entirely in highly coloured pictures on every flat surface (usually saints rather than scenes from the bible). Alison and I had seen Orthodox churches in the Baltic, but these are much more decorated.
The Romanian Orthodox was favoured by the Romanian Communists relative to the other religions, although any genuinely religious clergy faced repression. It therefore came out of that era much wealthier than the other churches and they seem determined to show it. Cluj has a monstrous new cathedral being built which seems far larger than anything it could actually need.
Cluj new cathedral under construction
But the most dramatic is the cathedral being built in Bucharest. This new church, which is near completion will be the largest Orthodox church in the world (currently the holder is one in Moscow which is so heavy it is sinking into the ground). Vast doesn't begin to cover it.
Amusingly it is behind Ceausescu's ridiculously large "Palace of the People" (the second largest administrative building in the world, behind the pentagon, and a ridiculous white elephant). Well, many people don't think it particularly amusing, including quite a few Romanians, because it is just too big and expensive to be justified in any reasonable way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_People%27s_Salvation_Cathedral
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