Archaeology in Piteşti. Th e ‘spirit of place’.Th e case of “Th e Town Clock Church”

Abstract

In the summer of 1962, a defining element for the old architecture and identity of Pitești, the Church of Saint Nicholas and Saint Panteleimon (“The Town Clock Church” – built by the inhabitants at the beginning of the nineteenth century over an older one, built in the mid eighteenth century), was demolished so that a new systematized centre of the region’s capital city to be built. In a new stage of modernization of the city centre, in 2007, the foundations of the two successive churches with numerous adjacent tombs were discovered in a vast archaeological rescue excavation. The author, a member of the archaeological team, shows in this article how the residents of the nowadays city identify themselves to the symbol of the old town during the archaeological excavations, the perception of archaeology by the urban contemporary, as well as the manner of municipal authorities (as commissioners of the public utility works and hence of the archaeological excavations) to assume and restore the archaeological remains.