From public archives

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.