The wildest place in the heart of Bucharest

Today I will take you to a place situated in Bucharest . The place looks almost like a park, and also have some little lakes in it. You can admire some vegetation that grows wild  but also if you like bird watching you can admire a lot of rare birds like black flycatcher, egrets, swans, cormorants,  and also you can meet some animals like foxes, otters, rabbits, muskrat, sea snakes, all of this in the city.

You can have a walk and  just enjoy the view of wild vegetation, or you can also take your bike and go cycling on top of it. Or just go bellow in the middle of the wild vegetation to admire the view more closer.

Now let me tell you a bit of the history of this place and also what used to be there before.

First I have to tell you the name of this places is Vacaresti lake, it is situated in  Vacaresti neighborhood in section 4 of the city, it is an anthropic  lake with a surface of 189 ha. It was designed  as a defense hydrological system against floods but was never finished due the end of Ceausescu era.

Vacaresti lake was just once filled with water from Dambovita river, the river that is crossing  Bucharest. But the costs of filling were to high for the use of it. So the idea and the places was abandoned and now at this moment the place is just a place where nature took  control of it.

Maybe soon it will become what some people are trying to do with it a national park but that is to see.

Bellow  you can see some pictures with it so you can make  an idea of the place. This time will be just a few pictures. I hope  you can enjoy it.

But how I was just saying earlier I will tell you also about what used to be this place before Ceausescu decided to make it a lake.

I will take you to a little trip  back in time. We are  in the year 1716, the Bucharest and the Wallachia it is ruled  for the first time by a foreigner prince. The Otomans were the ones who brought him from Fanar. This Prince on his name Nicolae Mavrocordat, decided to make for the people a new monastery, a very beautiful one

He chose for his monastery a hill, so in the year 1716, the first stone for the monastery was putted, in 1722 the monastery was finished, the monastery was made in a brancovenesc style and it was consecrated to the Trinity.

Nicolae Mavrocordat made at the monastery also a school, where the teaching language was Greek .The monastery had also a printing press and also a very nice library. At that time the library was one of the most complete  from all Europe.

After the death of Nicolae Mavrocordat in 1930, Wallachia will be ruled by his son Constantin, who in 1736 will add at the east wing another chapel and a new yard. The monastery at that time was one of the biggest monasteries from south-east Europe.

A century later the monastery becomes something totally different and that is a prison.

Now we are in the time of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. There is a legend about how it became a prison, at that time most of the churches from here were dedicated to the Holly mountain, that means that all the properties and the money from what the church had were going out of the country to the monks from the holly places.

The church than as also now didn’t payed any taxes but they had to help the poor ones and to give shelter to those in need, but the reality was bit different the monks were really corrupted. Getting back to the legend there is said that one night Cuza decided to take one of his incognito walks.So he went to the Vacaresti monastery dressed as a poor man who needs some food and shelter. The monks when they saw him they closed the door in his nose. Somewhere near by he had a little army waiting him and also some thieves so he got all the monks out of the sanctums and put the thieves instead because the monks were like the thieves.

Since than the monastery became a prison and stood like this for many years. Here later for political reasons many big personalities of the time were imprisoned among them writers and political people.

The monastery also used to have big tunnels that were going to different places in the city. The tunnels were big enough for a carriage so the people from the high society could  come to the monastery without being seen.

In 1973 the prison is dismantled and the restoration of the monastery starts. East wing of the monastery is restored but  3 years later the big earthquake will do some  damages to the monastery, but not the kind that would affect the structural strength. Even so a few years later after the earthquake, Ceausescu the ruler of that time decides to demolish the monastery and make instead a complex that would have a sport hall and also conference hall or a  Court. But in the end he tried to make an anthropic lake as defense system for  flooding.The revolution came and Ceausescu era ended and the project was never finished.

Now, I hope you enjoyed my little story. I leave you to see the pictures that I promised to you.

Enjoy !

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