A Walk Around the Block

For an American, there are two glaringly obvious differences between a Romanian city like Cluj and an American city like, say, Pittsburgh: 1.) uniform, gray, cement high rise apartment buildings lining the streets for as far as the eye can see and 2.) "seriously old stuff." 

Wikipedia provides the following information about Romania's Communist Architecture: "Systematization in Romania refers to a program of urban planning carried out under Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime.  Ceausescu, influenced by a visit to North Korea in 1971, began the campaign shortly after his return.  Systematization consisted largely of the demolition and reconstruction of existing villages, towns, and cities, in whole or in part, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a “multilaterally developed socialist society.”  Respecting neither traditional rural values nor a positive ethic of urbanism, systematization is now almost universally agreed to have been a disaster for Romania and a major contributing factor to the uncommonly violent fall of the Ceausescu regime during the Revolution of 1989."

From what I can gather, the region of Moldova, and Romania's capital city of Bucharest got the worst of it, though every Romanian city feels its effects to some degree.  Here's a picture from one of the main avenues in my neighborhood of Grigorescu.   

Although systematization did affect the outlying neighborhoods of Cluj, the majority of the city and its center were thankfully not significantly altered during the Communist era.  And man, oh man, does Cluj have an interesting and old history that deserves to be preserved!  There are impressive examples of Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture everywhere throughout this city.  After walking past this building (which I've come to find out is the Cluj-Napoca Calvaria Church) nearly everyday for the last several months, I finally took the time to enter the church grounds and read a little about it.

 

Here's what I found (you can click on the image to make it bigger):

Turns out that these church grounds, located just five minutes from my apartment, were home to a Benedictine abbey built in the 11th Century (i.e. the Middle Ages), and were among the first group of constructed buildings in the city of Cluj.  Over the course of the next one thousand years, the site was occupied, bought, destroyed, and inhabited by the Tatars (aka the Turks), Protestants (during the Reformation), Greek-Catholics, Jesuits, the Orthodox Church, the Roman-Catholics, and even some rich Transylvanian lords.  The hill on which the church sits truly is a National and European treasure.

The Calvaria Church in Cluj was fortunate, but it makes me shudder to think about a not-so-long-ago time in Romanian history--the mid-80's-- when monasteries, churches, synagogues, theaters, and monuments were demolished; here today, gone tomorrow.  It's true that not all of us happen to live down the street from a centuries-old monastery, but little local treasures are sprinkled around each of our communities.  And I think it's pretty safe to say that we could all be a little better about remembering to slow down and to take a good look around every once in awhile.