Royal Palace of Bucharest: Romania’s Former Royal Residence and National Art Museum
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Romania
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Romania
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page14 sections
History
The Royal Palace of Bucharest in Romania is a monumental former royal residence erected in the 1930s in a Baroque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical tradition. Located on Calea Victoriei, it developed from the Golescu Mansion and became closely connected with the country’s monarchy, political transformations, wartime history, and national art collections. Today, the building houses the National Museum of Art of Romania.
The Golescu Mansion and the Romanian monarchy
The palace occupies the site of the Golescu Mansion, a Neoclassical residence built between 1812 and 1815 for Dinicu Golescu, a prominent Wallachian boyar, intellectual, and writer. With approximately 25 rooms, it was among Bucharest’s largest residences of its period. In 1837, it became the official residence of Alexandru II Ghica, Prince of Wallachia.
Alexandru Ioan Cuza used the mansion as his official residence from 1859 to 1866, during the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. After Cuza’s removal in February 1866, the German prince Carol I was invited to rule Romania. He arrived in Bucharest on 10 May 1866 and took the mansion as his state residence. Following Romania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the kingdom in 1881, the building became known as the Royal Palace.
During Carol I’s reign, the palace was modernized and enlarged. Paul Gottereau and Karel Liman were associated with the Neoclassical remodeling, and a new wing containing principal state facilities, including the Throne Hall, was completed in 1906. Carol I’s will directed that the art collection decorating the palace remain with the royal family.
Rebuilding in the 1930s
A fire in the mid-1920s destroyed the principal part of the old palace. The royal family moved to Cotroceni Palace, and the surviving portions of the earlier building were demolished during the reconstruction that followed. In 1930, Carol II commissioned Nicolae Nenciulescu and Arthur Lorentz to rebuild the palace, but a complete restoration was abandoned in favor of a new structure.
The present palace was erected during the 1930s under Queen Marie’s direct supervision, with Nicolae Nenciulescu as principal architect. It was completed and inaugurated in 1937. Designed mainly for official ceremonies rather than family life, it was not the royal household’s everyday residence. Until 1944, the family lived in Casa Noua, a separate building behind the palace, with an alley between the two structures.
War, monarchy, and political rupture
On 23 August 1944, King Michael I’s coup against the pro-Nazi regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu led to Antonescu’s arrest at Casa Noua and Romania’s change of allegiance to the Allies. Antonescu was Romania’s military dictator and prime minister during its wartime alliance with Nazi Germany. Later that month, German Luftwaffe reprisals completely destroyed Casa Noua and seriously damaged the Royal Palace.
Cotroceni Palace remained unusable after the 1940 Bucharest earthquake, so the royal family moved to Elisabeta Palace. The Royal Palace’s damaged exterior was largely rebuilt by the end of 1944. In July 1945, the Throne Hall received a hurried and superficial repair for the ceremony in which Michael I received the Soviet Order of Victory, the Soviet Union’s highest military decoration. In 1946, the hall hosted the ceremony awarding him the highest grade of the United States Legion of Merit.
Michael I was forced to abdicate and leave Romania in 1947. The building was subsequently known as the Palace of the Republic, particularly from 1948 to 1990. Its royal art collections were assembled there under museum administration and became the basis of the Romanian National Gallery, later expanded with European and Romanian medieval art sections.
Communist and post-communist uses
During the communist period, the former palace served governmental and museum functions. The Throne Hall became the State Council Hall, a governmental meeting and ceremonial space, and hosted state events associated with Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s communist leader from 1965 until his overthrow in the 1989 revolution. Monarchical symbols, including the throne chair and the large royal coat of arms, were removed.
Between 1959 and 1960, Sala Palatului, a multipurpose hall, was built behind the palace on the site of Casa Noua. It replaced the former royal residence. In 1965, the former Throne Hall was used for the lying-in-state of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Romania’s communist leader before Ceausescu.
During the violent confrontations of the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, the palace was partially burned and its artworks were placed at serious risk. After the fall of communism, it continued to function as the National Museum of Art of Romania. Restoration of the damaged halls continued for more than two decades, with the most extensive work completed in 2013.
In 1990, the museum assumed use of the entire palace. Former King Michael and his wife, Anne, visited the building in April 1992, during their first post-communist visit to Romania. After the government led by Victor Ciorbea abolished the communist decree restricting the royal family’s Romanian citizenship in 1997, members of the family could return and recover some former property, but not the Royal Palace or the objects inside it.
The opening of the Gallery of Romanian Modern Art in 2001 led to the use of the name National Museum of Art of Romania for the museum and the building generally. The palace remains owned by the Romanian government. The royal family uses Elisabeta Palace as its official Bucharest residence and may use the Royal Palace on certain occasions.
The building continues to carry royal associations. In August 2016, Anne’s coffin lay in the Throne Hall for two days before her burial at Curtea de Arges. In December 2017, the funeral of Michael I, the last king of Romania, took place in front of the palace. The building is recognized as a historic monument of Romania and is regarded as a major symbol of the country’s monarchy, national heritage, and national pride and resistance. The square in front of it, formerly Palace Square, was renamed Revolution Square after the 1989 revolution, and an equestrian statue of Carol I stands at its center.
Remains
The present palace is a four-story building with a U-shaped plan enclosing a patio. Its form combines Baroque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical elements while incorporating aspects of the earlier palace’s design. Large pillars, ornamental balconies, reliefs, intricate decorative patterns, sculptures, and iron gates shape the exterior and continue into the interior decorative program.
Entrances and ceremonial circulation
Former royal entrance
The left-hand entrance was formerly used by the king and his guests. It leads through an octagonal corridor decorated in a Neo-Byzantine style to a large square formal hall. The palace also has a central entrance, giving the building two principal points of entry.
Voivodes’ Staircase
The monumental Voivodes’ Staircase forms part of the palace’s principal ceremonial interiors. A voivode was a historical ruler or military governor in Eastern Europe. Sculptural decoration appears on the staircase and elsewhere throughout the interior, linking the formal circulation spaces with the palace’s broader historicizing design.
Ceremonial interiors
Throne Hall
The Throne Hall was the principal ceremonial room of the royal palace. Its decoration includes extensive gilding, red velvet curtains, stucco patterns, and varied marble columns. Ruschita marble was selected for its columns, whose shafts, bases, and capitals differ in color, form, and artistic order. The hall was also designed with acoustics that amplify sound for ceremonies, speeches, and other events.
Royal Dining Hall and Ballroom
The Royal Dining Hall and Ballroom are among the palace’s principal ceremonial interiors. The Ballroom contains crystal chandeliers, mirrored walls, and gilded decoration. Together with the Throne Hall, these spaces demonstrate the building’s use for formal state occasions rather than primarily for domestic royal life.
Materials and decorative design
Marble columns occur throughout the palace in individual, paired, and pilaster forms. Their shafts, bases, and capitals vary across the interiors, particularly in the Throne Hall. The building uses natural stone and several varieties of marble, including Carrara marble, black marble, cream marble imported from France, chocolate marble from Belgium, and Ruschita marble.
The interior design adapts principles associated with Robert and James Adam’s Neoclassical proposals while retaining some Baroque effects instead of reproducing the simpler forms associated with ancient Greece and Rome. Indirect lighting was incorporated into the ceiling treatment. Acoustic planning was used in the Throne Hall and auditorium to amplify sound during ceremonies, speeches, and other events.
The decorative program changed as the palace passed from royal to communist use. Monarchical emblems were removed, while socialist and medieval Romanian motifs were emphasized. These included forms associated with vernacular architecture and inscriptions in Church Slavonic, a liturgical and literary language used in Slavic Orthodox Christian contexts. During the 1960s, Roman arches were added or restored as part of a renewed emphasis on a classical Latin spirit. The dome was excluded from socialist-realist architectural concepts because of its religious associations.
Museum collections
The National Museum of Art of Romania occupies the palace and houses more than 70,000 works in collections and galleries devoted to Romanian medieval art, Romanian modern art, European art, Oriental art, and heritage. The collections include works attributed to or by artists such as Rembrandt, Monet, and El Greco.
The European Art Gallery was inaugurated in 1951 and is the largest of the museum’s gallery areas, with 15 rooms. The Heritage Museum includes approximately 4,000 drawings and prints by Romanian and foreign artists. These collections now occupy a building whose rooms, materials, and ceremonial spaces retain the physical traces of its royal origins, later governmental use, and successive changes in political meaning.
