Traveller in Romania: Day trip re-discovering Sinaia on foot in a freezing day, the ‘Mount Sinai’ of Bucegi PART 2

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Immediately from the main street we took a side street and in a fifteen-minute light walk we found the Cultural Centre “Carmen Sylva”.

Carmen Sylva is the pen name of Elizabeth, the first Queen of Romania and the wife of King Carol I. She was very artistic - pianist, singer, prolific writer, painter, strong-willed and, overall, a very nice lady. She took care of the wounded during the Romanian War of Independence; she was interested in higher education of women in Romania, and she was the first Royal patron of the Romanian Red Cross - among others. Carmen Sylva is a name that I suggest you look up for more information.

People are so friendly and helpful and so willing to share their knowledge. At the cultural centre, Elena, one of the ladies working there, gave us a tour and few facts about the centre. 

We learnt that the building was in 1898 the guardhouse for the Peles Castle guard,

then later was set up and it became the Primary School ‘Carmen Sylva’, the first co-ed school, where His Majesty King Mihai also studied. It functioned as a school until in 2008 when it was turned into a Cultural Centre that is used for… cultural activities (you wouldn’t guess it!) various clubs (chess among others!), piano lessons, workshop, concerts, exhibitions. The lobby and the main concert room were decorated with paintings and drawings of local artists and about Carmen Sylva and scenes with famous actors, and going up the stairs the walls were fully covered with photos from all activities they held during the years in the centre. And there were plenty!

La piece de resistance was the library in the building! An amazing room with an extra level that had that unique pleasant and formidable smell of books and not any books, the old books, loved and read and re-loved and re-read. The library was in process of restructuring but the look of it, the feel of it, just gave me goose bumps. I think I was grinning to my ears in awe.  It’s incomparable, I know, but that feeling of belonging, of shared universe, I only sensed it in the Bodleian Library of Oxford.