Ploiesti Romania: The Sad Story Of A Beautiful House

Ploiesti may never get into your Romanian itinerary. However, if you’re traveling from Bucharest to the Slanic Salt Mine or vice versa, it’s likely that you’ll have to change trains in Ploiești and spend a few hours in the town.

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Table of Contents

Is there anything to see in Ploiesti?

If you ask Google for sights, it will probably point you to the Clock Museum. It doesn’t seem very promising, but at least it’s not far from the train station.
When I was there the Clock Museum happened to be closed so I just got a glimpse of the nice building and its courtyard.

Poiesti Clock Museum — Ploiesti Clock Museum

After visiting the Clock Museum, look around for small tower on the next street. Circled around and you will come face to face with an extremely beautiful building.

Radu Stanian’s house

You will recognize it immediately: stately entrance, ornate facade, small tower, conservatory, stained glass windows. Neglected to the point of ruin, with an overgrown courtyard, sagging eaves and cobwebbed windows. Yet dignified in its dusty grandeur. A house that has probably seen a lot and has a lot to tell.

Radu Stanian and his son

The building of the house was completed in 1850. Its first owner, Radu Stanian, was a successful lawyer, politician, liberal, deputy and three-time mayor of Ploiesti from 1883 to 1896. He was also an active participant in the anti-monarchist revolutionary movement “Republic of Ploiesti”. The “revolution” was launched in 1870 in his house. As soon as it was suppressed, Stanian was arrested and later acquitted.

After his death, the house was inherited by his son Radu R. Stanian, who was also the mayor of Ploiesti from 1907 to 1911.

Nicolae Constantinescu-Bordeni – the next owner

After World War I, the Nicolae Constantinescu-Bordeni, also a future mayor of the city, bought the house. He commissioned a local architect to restore the house and it is after the restauration when the house acquired its present appearance. It was then the tower was added.

in socialist times

In the 1950s, the socialist government house nationalized the house and Constantinescu-Bordeni was sent to dig the Danube-Black Sea Canal. As a matter of fact, that was a fate shared by many of the new government’s political opponents, who ended up in the canal’s labor camps.
During socialism, the house was used as a ceremonial house for weddings. In 2008 the government returned it to the Constantinescu-Bordeni heirs.