Museums, Bucharest

The National Museum of Art of Romania was founded in 1948 from the royal collection as well as with works drawn from local private and public collections.
Departaments:
-Romanian Medieval and Modern Art
-European Painting and Sculpture
-Prints and Drawings
-Oriental Art
- European Decorative Art
-Contemporary Art
Opening hours:
Wednesday - Sunday,
11.00 a.m. - 7.00 p.m. (May - September) 10.00 a.m. - 6.00 p.m. (October - April
Closed:
Monday, Tuesday

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UPDATE: The museum was closed for modernization between 2009-2010. With an investment of 13 mil. EUR the museum will reopen in 2011 with better interiors, halls and exhibits, many of them modern, with multimedia explanations. A new must see for Bucharest in 2011!

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The Museum of Romanian Peasant is one of my favourite museums in Bucharest. It houses, as the name suggests, a large collection of objects used by Romanian peasants: pottery, textiles, traditional costumes, icons and other religious artifacts, pieces of furniture, carpets etc as well as photographs documenting the customs of rural life. In one of the galleries you can see a wooden church and in another a wooden peasant house. They also have some beautiful "troite" (crosses placed at crossroads or at the edge of a village). The museum was founded in 1906 under the name of Ethnographic and National Art Museum and was housed temporarily at another location. Construction to the present building started in 1912, was stopped in 1916 and restarted in 1932. It was completed in 1941, 29 years after it was started. The building is the project of architect Nicolae Ghika Budeşti who designed it as an illustration of the neo-Romanian style, very popular in Bucharest at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1953, the communists “liberated” the building, turning it into a museum dedicated to the history of the Communist Party and sending the collection away. In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, the collection returned home.

What makes this museum special is the way the collection is displayed, less like a museum and more like an art gallery. Objects are not behind glass cases but displayed freely and the display information is hand written on pieces of paper or illustrated by sketches. This somehow cuts the distance between the viewer and the objects, making the impact of the displays greater, more personal. It’s certainly different than other museums I’ve been to. The vision belongs to the museum’s first director after 1990, painter Horia Bernea, and to one of his main collaborators Irina Nicolau. Under their guidance the Museum of Romanian Peasant won the the European Museum of the Year Award in 1996, the first museum in Eastern Europe to be granted this honor.

This palace was built in the 1830s by minister Costache Sutu as a residence for his family. The palace has an interesting eclectic architecture with neo-gothic elements. Now it hosts the Bucharest History and Art Museum. Here you can learn about the history of the city, starting from archeological findings of prehistoric times. Among the over 400,000 objects on display there are maps, engravings, coins, portraits, traditional costumes, arms and furniture.

Opening time is from 10:00 to 18:00. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

My picture shows an aerial view of the palace because I took it from the 21st floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, situated on the opposite side of University Square.

The National History Museum occupies 8000 m2 and presents in 60 rooms very important exhibits gathered from the formed National Museum of Antiquities and other similar institutions from all over the country. It was built in 1900 by Romanian architect Alexandru Savulescu in French Eclectic style, designed as Central Post Office. Opened as a museum in 1970.

The Museum of the Romanian Peasant is a very interesting place to visit in Bucharest, as it shows a large collection of original textiles (clothes and costumes), icons, ceramics and other artifacts of Romanian peasant life. Its collection sums over 100,000 objects. One of the nicest exibit inside is the house-in-house, which is an actual house interior from Gorj county, and some parts of the exterior of the house. This house was brought here from Gorj but was taken outside to the Village Museum by the communist party, it returned to the Peasant Museum in 2002.

The museum was first opened in 1930 but in the communist era (until 1990) the building housed a museum representing the communist party. Currently, there is still a room at the basement displaying ironically some of the items from that period of the museum. Another interesting fact is that the building is placed on the former site of the State Mint. This museum was designated the "European Museum of the Year" in 1996.

Opening hours: 10-18 all week excepting Mondays

The guidebooks said this the best museum in Bucharest and one of the best in the country and it was voted the European Museum of the year in 1996 so we headed here on our last day in Bucharest.

The exhibits are well laid out, you can find cards in most of the rooms with descriptions in several languages. There are two wooden churches and a cottage from the northern region of the country on display, one of the churches is outside. Displays in the rooms include Romanian clothes, pottery, stained glass icons and a full Romanian classroom.

In the basement of the museum is the Communist Iconography Museum with paintings of Stalin, bust of Lenin and portraits of some dictator I don't recognize, perhaps Ceausescu's predecessor.

The former residence of the kings of Romania is since 1948 the home of the National Art Museum. The core of the museum are the former private collections of the royal family, but I suppose there were many additions, since the museum now has over 100,000 pieces.
There are two main sections: the European Gallery and the National Gallery. Both are very rich and display works dating from the 15th to the 20th century. In the National Gallery there is of course a room dedicated to the famous sculptor Brancusi. In the European Gallery there are, among many others, works by Tintoretto, Brueghel, Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco, Cezanne, Renoir, Monet.
Opening time is from 11:00 to 19:00 in summer (May to September), from 10:00 to 18:00 the rest of the year. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.