The Cantacuzino Castle is situated in Bușteni, Romania, in the Zamora district, on the street bearing the same name. The building has a great architectural, historical, documentary and artistic value.
The building, whose construction was completed in 1911, was conducted by the architect Grigore Cerchez, a prominent figure of the Neo-Romanian style, at the request of Prince Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, who was nicknamed “Nababul” (“The Nabob”).
The castle was placed on the site of an old hunting lodge that the prince’s family had used as a halt during their pilgrimages to Brașov.
The construction works lasted for five years, and the furnishing lasted another year and a half. At the inauguration in 1911, the castle impressed not only by its style and beauty, but also by its modern facilities in relation to those times, benefitting from electricity, sewerage system and drinking water.
Until 1930, the castle served as the summer residence of the family of Prince Grigore Cantacuzino. The castle belonged to the Cantacuzino family until its nationalization in 1948, then became a sanatorium of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The castle underwent restoration work and today it is open to the public.
Cantacuzino Castle is sometimes nicknamed “Zamora” Castle due to its location. However, it is said that the name Zamora came from a hound that belonged to the members of the Cantacuzino family. They shouted “Za ‘Mura!” to signal the hound to bring them the prey.
The building was made of carved stone on the outside and brick on the inside, the foundation is made of concrete, and the roof is made of tile.
The construction is of the pavilion type, having the shape of a quadrilateral with the southern side open. The entire castle consists of 4 bodies. The central pavilion has a floor area of 1,200.30 m2 (12,919.9 sq ft) and 3,148.02 m2 (33,885.0 sq ft) in total (basement, ground floor and first floor). The service pavilion has ground floor and first floor, covering an area of 403.80 m2 (4,346.5 sq ft). The administrative villa has one single level, of 114.41 m2 (1,231.5 sq ft). The fourth building is the chapel.
video: https://youtu.be/IfrgqyC4sFY
The castle is now privately owned and has been open to the public since 2010. Cantacuzino Castle has, since then, received tens of thousands of visitors annually, both from within the country and abroad. Tourists can visit the courtyard, which contains various sculptures. They also have access at the interior of the castle, through daily guided tours.
Since 2015, the upper floor of the castle hosts an art gallery, which periodically displays exhibitions with works by several artists.
In addition to its traditional elements, since 2016, the castle courtyard hosts an adventure park for children and parents, as well as two restaurants with a terrace, opened in 2012 and 2020, respectively.
In 2022, the castle was a filming location for the Netflix series Wednesday.
conquered. This remote hamlet is a breathtaking marvel of nature and human endurance, where life hangs literally on the edge—cliffside homes clinging to slopes that make strong men dizzy and old women chuckle at lowlanders’ trepidation.
Henri Marie Coandă (Romanian pronunciation: [ɑ̃ˈri ˈko̯andə] (7 June 1886 – 25 November 1972) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer, and builder of an experimental aircraft, the Coandă-1910, which never flew. He invented a great number of devices, designed a “flying saucer” and discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics.
and Năvodari on the Black Sea. Administered from Agigea, it is an important part of the waterway link between the North Sea and the Black Sea via the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal. The main branch of the canal, with a length of 64.4 km (40.0 mi), which connects the Port of Cernavodă with the Port of Constanța, was built in 1976–1984, while the northern branch, known as the Poarta Albă–Midia Năvodari Canal, with a length of 31.2 km (19.4 mi), connecting Poarta Albă and the Port of Midia, was built between 1983 and 1987.
Although the idea of building a navigable canal between the Danube and the Black Sea is old, the first concrete attempt was made between 1949 and 1953, when the communist authorities of the time used this opportunity to eliminate political opponents, so the canal became notorious as the site of labor camps, when at any given time, between 5,000 and 20,000 detainees, mostly political prisoners, worked on its excavation. The total number of prisoners used as labor force during this period is unknown, with the total number of deaths being estimated at several tens of thousands. The construction works of the Danube–Black Sea Canal were to be resumed 20 years later, in different conditions.
George Emil Palade (Fellowship of the Royal Society, Royal Microscopical Society) (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈdʒe̯ordʒe eˈmil paˈlade]; November 19, 1912 – October 7, 2008) was a Romanian-American cell biologist.
born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime, the history of the Germans in the Banat (and more broadly, Transylvania), and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by Stalinist Soviet occupying forces in Romania. Müller has been an internationally well-known author since the early 1990s, and her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. She has received over 20 awards, including the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. On 8 October 2009, it was announced she would be awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Sciences in Göttingen, and of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, both of which are in Germany. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”, together with Eric Betzig and William Moerner.
