Do You Want a Castle as Gift? (VIDEO)
By Diana Ungureanu / Chisinau / Moldova.ORG/ -- If you would have been called Alice, and you were Grigore Cantacuzino's granddaughter, you would have lived at the beginning of the 20th century, you would have received a Palace as gift, but not a somehow Palace, but the Cantacuzino Palace from Floreşti, Prahova County, Romania.
Designed by the famous architect Ioan D. Berindei, the palace is a work of art, its construction starting in 1907, but the war and economic crisis slowed the work.
With facade plated limestone of Albesti, it has 10 columns in neoclassical style, grouped in pairs. It had 365 bedrooms (one for each day of the year), 7 ballrooms and it was located in a park of conduct of 150 hectares, with aqueducts, golf links and horseback riding.
It was partially finished in 1914, after the death of Cantacuzino, and then, in 1940, when he was almost finished, there came over the war and it was left, being discovered with delight and enchantment by the Germans, and then plundered and ravaged by thieves and, finally, by Russians and locals, as it happens after any war.
It was supposed to be a miniature copy of the Trianon Palace from Versailles, in the beautiful and sumptuous style "rococo".
Today the small Trianon, as it was called, looks more like a ruin, having standing only the front side, plated with limestone of Albesti, but inside there remained heaps of rubble, ground and rubbish.
In the sixth decade of the 20th century it was registered on the list of monuments, but there was not taken a decision on restoration. The beautiful building that could easily become a pride of Romania became a beautiful ruin of Romania.
Now in the building's annexes there has set up a convalescent home for TB, the palace suffers of a mushroom – a kind of cancer of the stone and the Park of conduct became the communal meadow for animals.
What a pity of this monument, of this architectural masterpiece of art, which lies in ruin, but even so the ruins, it impresses through that remained of this building.
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