From public archives

Photographed in 1874 · Featured from 2026-10-14

A woman from Bacău mows, in the summer of 1874, caught by Nicolae Grigorescu in an ordinary moment of labor elevated to dignity by his attentive eye. Grigorescu, known primarily as a painter, also practiced photography as a tool for documenting and studying human types from Romania's rural world. The scythe's repeated arc, the tensed arms, the silhouette bent toward the earth — together they compose a scene in which fieldwork takes on the weight of a portrait. At that time, photographing peasants was not a neutral act: it meant committing to memory a world that modernity had already begun to change.

Photographed in 1925 · Featured from 2026-10-07

The "Hungaria" Hotel in Alba Iulia, built in 1887, became the setting for a decisive meeting on the evening of 30 November 1918: deputies and delegates from across Transylvania gathered here to settle the terms of Union and set the agenda for the next day's Great National Assembly. This 1925 photograph captures it already renamed "Dacia" — a new identity it received after 1 December 1918. Its animated façade anchored the city centre, housing a restaurant, café, and meeting hall frequented by the local elite. In 1968 the hotel was renamed "Apulum"; in 1980 it was demolished.

Photographed in 1925 · Featured from 2026-09-16

The Caragiale Theatre in Alba Iulia, preserved on a color postcard from 1925, stands as a statement of civic architecture in a city that had become, only a few years earlier, the symbol of Romania's Great Union. The card was published by Bernard Weiss, one of the small local publishers who methodically documented the urban landscapes of interwar Romania. Its format — 9×14 cm, color print — reflects the commercial standards of the era, when such images circulated among families and institutions as testimony to provincial modernization.

Photographed in 1945 · Featured from 2026-09-09

The postcard's deep sepia barely resolves the silhouette of the Theological Church in Blaj, fixed on paper in 1945. For centuries the town on the Transylvanian Plain had sheltered one of the most important centers of Romanian Greek-Catholic culture, and the church within the theological institute gave that spiritual authority visible form. The postcard was published in Craiova by M. C. Florescu — a detail that speaks to how images circulated in a year of war's end and uncertain transition.

Photographed in 1930 · Featured from 2026-08-26

The Black Church (Biserica Neagră) of Brașov stands in the light of 1930 with the same gravity its Gothic walls have carried for centuries. Built between 1383 and 1477, it remains the largest medieval church between the Carpathians and the Danube — marked forever by the 1689 fire that blackened its stones and gave it its name. The postcard was printed in Gherla by the "Ilustrația" publishing house in a pocket format — 14×9 cm — circulating the monument's image beyond the city's limits. The black-and-white photograph strips the building of any easy picturesque quality, leaving only its mass.

Photographed in 1933 · Featured from 2026-08-19

The Orthodox church in Sinaia stands serene in 1933 light, its slender towers cutting a straight line against the sky. Built in the seventeenth century at the initiative of Mihail Cantacuzino, the monastery later gave its name to the entire town that grew up around it. The photograph comes from a Spanish collection — a reminder that this Carpathian resort drew eyes and visitors from across interwar Europe. The photographer remains unknown.

Photographed in 1917 · Featured from 2026-08-12

Summer 1917, eastern side of Avram Iancu Square in Cluj — the city is under Austro-Hungarian administration, yet the war consuming Europe has not yet erased the daily routines of its residents. The facades lining the eastern edge form a scene of urban sobriety typical of a Central European provincial center caught between two eras. The square already bore the name of the Romanian revolutionary, a sign of the identity tensions that would redraw the region's map just one year later. What we see here is a space suspended in the final months of an old order.

Photographed in 1930 · Featured from 2026-07-22

The Palace of Justice in Brașov, photographed in 1930, carries the characteristic severity of interwar institutional architecture — massive volumes, an imposing façade, a building designed to project authority. The postcard was published by "Cartea Românească" Press, Brașov branch, which says something about the city's cultural vitality: a publishing house with national ambitions was extending its network into Transylvania. The palace itself had been built during the Austro-Hungarian period and was by then serving the judiciary of Greater Romania. The color postcard, nine by fourteen centimeters, belongs to a common interwar practice — documenting urban life through picture postcards, the only "visual archive" accessible to the general public.

Photographed in 1914 · Featured from 2026-07-17

Cluj in 1914 looks strikingly different along Wesselényi Miklós-utca — today's Calea Regelui Ferdinand — from anything we would recognise now. The street has carried many names over the years, from Híd utcza to Gheorghe Doja, each renaming marking a shift in regime or official language. The postcard was published by Schuster Emil in the same year Europe went to war, making this quiet city corner a witness to a world on the verge of disappearing.