Cotroceni Palace
The place where you are not allowed to take photos...
The residence of the President of Romania used to be, 300 years ago, a monastery, built by Serban Cantacuzino, with a vast terrain and lots of facilities around it.
"On top of a hill, the palace rises on the spot where in the 17th century used to be a monastery of St. Serghei and Bacchus. The land belonged to Serban Cantacuzino - ruler of Wallachia between 1668-1688. In the forest that covers the hill he had escaped the tatars. The monastery he built there was pillaged by the Russians and Turks, who scraped off the eyes of the saints painted on the walls and stole everything inside, even the pots from the kitchen" (Paul Morand, Bucuresti, page 103)
In 1880 Carol I started to build his future royal residence starting from the blueprints in Venetian style of Paul Gottereau. With later interventions and constructions of different architects, even from the communist period, the contemporary monastery, museum and presidential residence have now an architectonic style hard to define.
"French architect Gottereau, in charge with building the new residence, destroyed the old palace, including the brick walls of the fortress and left standing only its little church" (same source)
A valuable architectonic piece is the church of Cantacuzino, reconstructed in the same style after it had been demolished in 1985 by Ceasusescu.
"Cantacuzino rests here under a tombstone with floral patterns which coil like the snake around the scepter, among the graves of royal children sleeping under the numb silver of the candlesticks" (same)
Museum Cotroceni, which can be visited only by booking in advance and if you have some ID with you, preserves several representative places for the construction style of the 17th century.
The presidential wing was built in the 80s by Nicolae Vladescu, after in 1977 Ceausescu had transformed it into a guests' room.
"White like the peasants' clothes, Cotroceni dominates with its terraces the smog and soot of the city. It still looks like an old mansion with the great entrance guarded by the white bearded Swiss guard with his ebony batton with silver head.
I like the impressive marble stairs with the blue carpet, ornated with all the Hohenzollerns, in Wagnerian poses; I like the hexagonal severity of the library belonging to the late King Ferdinand, where English magazines mingle with photos from the beginning of the century [...]"
Sources: Wikipedia
Presidency.ro
Paul Morand, Bucuresti, Editura ECHINOX, Cluj, 200, p103-104.
