Romania at the time of cathedrals

Projects for the Romanian National Cathedral in Bucharest

Abstract

Contrary to what happens in the western world, where we witness many conversions of places of worship in places for profane uses, the countries that left atheist communism after 1989 are characterized by a fever of religious constructions that intensify towards the this, in the post-Soviet space.
Romania is, in a way, exemplary, because from rural parishes and neighborhood churches to large buildings (such as cathedrals of metropolitan or archbishop's headquarters), all its territory is covered with new churches that will last a long time, although only be thanks to the materials used. The traditional oscillation between synchrony with the West and protochronism necessarily demands solutions, because the initial fervor ends up giving way to anguish when the materializations of pious fervor are known (including the results of the contests for the new diocesan cathedrals). There are many architectural proposals that seem to be even worse than the nineteenth-century genre called Saint-Sulpice. The country is atypical, because it does not seem to have - for now - a degree of diversity (in the recent sense, not the usual one) comparable to other countries, which helps to see certain problems better.
Therefore, even though Romania is characterized by a great multi-denominationality and an open ecumenical attitude - magnificently illustrated by Mircea Eliade - statistically, the majority of the population belongs to the Orthodox Byzantine rite, and the idea of ​​a new National Cathedral or of the Nation has revived. This idea - associated with the time of the birth of the national state and some notable episodes - dates from the interwar period, when the issue of the transposition of small traditional buildings on a larger scale had already been established.