One of the representative buildings built in the interwar period in Bucharest, relevant from an engineering and architectural point of view, is the Palace of the Telephones, property of the Romanian Telephone Company, Ltd. From an engineering point of view, it is the first tall building in Romania with a metal structure (with a specific structure of the „skyscraper”, type building built in the era in the United States of America), the execution time was very short for construction of such complexity (20 months, between September 5, 1931, and April 24, 1933). Between 1933 (the date of its inauguration) and 1956 (the date of the inauguration of the “Casa Scânteii”), it was the tallest building in Bucharest, with a height of 52.50 m. From an architectural point of view, it was the first major modernist building on Calea Victoriei. Through the ornamentation of the facade and the solutions adopted for the interior design, the building has specific characteristics of the modern style of that era („Art Deco”, appreciated and affirmed worldwide), becoming, over time, an important urban planning objective of the image of the city. At present, 90 years after the official inauguration on April 24, 1933, the Palace of the Telephones is in service, being one of the representative objectives of the built heritage of the city of Bucharest, classified as a historical architectural monument.

The article aims to analyse and publish a military plan from the Russian-Austrian-Turkish War (1787–1792), referring to eight military camps from the vicinity of few towns and villages in the Principality of Moldavia, represented on the map in distinct squares. The Habsburg troops under Field Marshal Prince Frederick Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who moved from Hotin to Roman in October 1788 to occupy the winter cantonments, were temporarily encamped in these sites. Because the documentary potential of the plan can be exploited from the perspective of several research areas, we first highlighted the military context in which the plan was drawn up. We also identified the units of the Habsburg army that moved from Hotin to Roman and were temporarily stationed in the camps along the route. Secondly, with the help of narrative and cartographic sources, we detailed the route the Austrian troops travelled from Hotin to Roman. Thirdly, we analysed the topographic surveys of the areas in which the camps were established and of the localities represented on the map: Mileanca, Nicșeni, Botoșani, Flămânzi, Hârlău, Târgu Frumos, Șcheia, and Roman. As the plan is not very precise and detailed, we have tried to re-establish the area’s toponymy and highlight some structural characteristics and architectural landmarks of the localities represented in the plan.

This article traces the evolution of the urban landscape of Constantine's Rock and its Medina during French colonisation. It examines the transformations and restructuring of the urban fabric between 1837 and 1937. Various archival materials were collected and analysed, including written documents, maps, and photographs. This analysis enabled us to ascertain the chronology of urban transformation operations on the traditional fabric and observe the changes in the urban landscape of Constantine's Rock during the study period. The findings demonstrate the scale of demolition and restructuring operations on the existing fabric and the substantial creation of new urban and architectural forms influenced by Western European norms. Ultimately, these urban transformations resulted in a near-total transformation of the traditional urban landscape of Constantine’s Rock and the gradual disappearance of the millennia-old Medina.

A significant number of march itineraries through Romanian territory are preserved in the Russian State Military Historical Archive. These itineraries were compiled during the Great Surveying Campaign of 1828–1832. They are another type of military cartographic sources, drawn up for the Russian army during the military occupation of the Romanian Principalities. In this study, we comment on the itinerary from Târgu Frumos to Botoșani, which was made by Kuznetsov in 1830.

Since its appearance, the press has been the prerogative of urban dwellers, hardly going beyond the walls of the towns with the generalization of the literacy process of the great majority of the population in the nineteenth century. For this reason, until the advent of radio, the main channel of information provided important data about the town in which it appeared, with frequent references to the other towns of the time, which were the political, administrative, educational, and cultural centres. Given the aspects mentioned above, in the present research, I was concerned with revealing how the Romanian press in Transylvania was interested in presenting information about the Saxon towns in the province where it operated. I was interested in several aspects, such as those dedicated to demographics and political and cultural activity, but also those related to the coexistence of Romanians and Saxons in the towns inhabited by the latter. I have not avoided information related to these areas. To carry out the research, I studied the major Romanian periodicals that appeared in Transylvania and wanted to inform their readers as well as possible. Among those studied, I mention Telegraful Român [The Romanian Telegraph], Gazeta Transilvaniei [The Transylvanian Gazette], Tribuna [The Tribune], Tribuna Poporului [The People’s Tribune], and Foaia Poporului [The People’s Leaflet], with the mention that I also analysed other periodicals, but its did not constantly publish information of interest for the analysis.

From the point of view of historical cartography, the city of Iasi has a fairly good situation, one that has been continuously enriched in recent years following the discovery of unknown plans in foreign archives. An Austrian map from 1855 has been added to the city’s map heritage, along with several Russian maps, including the oldest known plan of the capital of Moldavia, made in 1739. These cartographic documents are in addition to several plans drawn up by engineers at the request of the local authorities, starting with the plans of the Italian Giuseppe de Bajardi (1819), the Austrian Joseph Raschek (1844), and the French Frederic Peytavin (1857). Surprises were also provided by these plans. While the original of the 1819 plan has not yet been identified, the 1844 plan – for which historians used a Romanian copy from the National Archives in Iasi – has recently been found in its first form, published in the meantime by Sorin Iftimi. The last plan mentioned in this series, the one from 1857, seemed to offer no surprises since the original was in the archives. It was an appearance, and in this study, we reveal the results of recent research in local archives and libraries, which showed not only the reasons for the creation of this plan only 13 years after the previous one but also added a new, unknown version. It is a version also made by Frederic Peytavin between 1855 and 1857, but in 19 colour plates. At the Romanian Academy Library, only 13 plates have survived, nine of which cover peripheral or lowland areas of the city, and four of which are more important because they capture central or densely inhabited areas. One advantage of this version is the type of buildings captured, wall buildings or wooden houses, a distinction that cannot be made in the first version. There is evidence of a significant increase in the number of buildings made of durable and more fire-resistant materials compared to modest wooden constructions, as a result of the measures taken in the building sector after the Organic Regulation. The first type of construction dominates the central area and Copou but is also found along the Păcurari road. The slums (mahalale), on the other hand, are still characterised by modest construction, with wall buildings being much rarer. With the exception of the houses in the slums or the simple houses in the centre, the plan of the stone buildings was drawn by the surveyor. For the interior of the town, it is useful to observe the local hydrography, with all the springs, the small streams that flowed into the Bahlui River, fragments of the Cacaina and Nicolina streams, along with the town’s fountains. We can consider this plan as a cadastral one, allowing us to understand the stage reached by the capital of Moldavia before the Union of 1859. Signs of modernisation were evident, especially in the central area, but less visible in the slums, where changes were still awaited.

This study aims to present the phenomenon of mixed marriages in the Catholic parish of Făgăraș, Transylvania, in the first half of the XIX century. The paper is based on unpublished sources, namely the parish registers and other documents related to marriages, kept in the Archive of the Catholic Parish of Făgăraș and the archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Alba Iulia. First, the author demonstrates that Făgăraș was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious town, and then he reassembles the Catholic parish's demographic evolution. We discover the steps a person who wanted to marry someone of another faith had to take. The author analyses the data gathered from the sources, the most important being the marriage register. We find out which denominations were preferred by Catholics for marriage. Undoubtedly, the Calvinist and the Lutheran ones were by far the most popular.

The article recalls some attempts, around 1990, to influence Buzau city policies by promoting new urban practices and oscillating between various types of legislation, regulations, and norms. Faced with communist Romania’s urban systematization programs, a significant number of ‘dissident’ actions emerged, bravely opposing state and local policies or proposing alternative projects. Buzau, too, became a stage for such resilient urban activism. Among antecedents, the details for Dacia Square and the systematization project submitted in 1939 will be followed, after the war, by a preliminary project of the first systematization sketch submitted in 1949. Subsequently, the systematization of the center will be based on the simplistic evaluations of the preliminary project. It will legitimize the restructuring of Dacia Square, some major urban routes, and some historical areas, which will be realized gradually until the end of the ninth decade. The launch of the project for the “New Communist Center” carried out by Research and Design Institute for Systematization, Housing and Communal Housing [Institutul de Cercetare și Proiectare pentru Sistematizare, Locuințe și Gospodărie Comunală] (ISLGC) in Bucharest generated some reactions from a group of architects, the author producing alternative projects through which he tried to stop the demolitions. For the same purpose, it was sent to the first secretary of the county, a statement arguing the preservation of the historic center and its integration into the contemporary city. Finally, the text brings to light the significant attempts in 1990, in collaboration with Aurelian Mareș, the chief architect of the county, to continue the dissident approaches of the ’80s. These efforts, including the launch of a competition for the demolished area in the northwest of the Communal Palace, the design of a Master Plan for Buzău, and the publication of articles in the local press, aimed to correct views on urban development and anticipate new laws and regulations adapted to Buzau’s values. While their effects were only partial, they hold the potential to shape the future urban policies of the City Hall.

With the start of coal mining in the Jiu Valley, more and more foreigners of different languages and religions arrived. This development gained momentum after 1870, and by 1910, the two valleys had become the most important coal-mining area in the Kingdom of Hungary. Although Petroșani and Lupeni were only granted urban status on 4 January 1924 and 1960 respectively, the urbanisation of the settlements had already begun at the beginning of the 20th century. The mass immigration of skilled and unskilled workers from almost all parts of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy changed the ethnic and religious composition of the mining centres. In our paper, we describe the changes in the ethnic and confessional structure of the Jiu Valley from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century between the two world wars. We also reflect on the place of birth of the immigrants.

Since 1770, the history of Wallachia has been enriched with a new type of source, one coming from cartography, the urban plans. The oldest maps of a local city were those of the capital of Bucharest and date back to the Russian-Turkish war of 1768–1774; the reasons for the topographical survey were not of geographical or historical interest but were based on the need of the armies involved in the war to know as well as possible the occupied territory. While the first three plans were drawn up by the Russian army surveyors before the Kuciuk-Kainardji peace treaty of 1774, in the next war, from 1788–1792, the concern to know the plan of the city shifted to the Austrian army surveyors. The plans of Ernst and Purcel (1789, 1791) make a great step forward in terms of rendering the topography of the city, but further progress is made in the next war, from 1806–1812, by Russian engineers with two new plans. All these plans were taken to Petersburg, Moscow, or Vienna, so the local authorities had no detailed plans for Bucharest. Historians know of an order given by Prince Alexander Suțu to the engineer Johann Freywald in 1819 to draw up a plan, but another engineer from Austria, Moritz von Ott, seems to have been in charge of this mission. The plan was believed to have been completed in 1823 and subsequently lost; a damaged version was found in the 1980s by Paul Păltănea in Galați. Recent research has led to the discovery of the plan at the State Library in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). The map was made by Moritz von Ott in 1820 and contains valuable data on the extent of the town, the main buildings (churches, monasteries, and houses of the great boyars), and the administrative organization. As a copy of the plan came into the possession of the Prussian consul in Bucharest, Ludwig Kreuchely von Schwerdtberg, he added some notes referring to places connected with the events of 1821 in Wallachia and the Filiki Eteria movement.