SARMIZEGETUSA IN DANGER!
The rocks from Orăştiei Mountains
Last Saturday I spent the afternoon in Laxenburg Palace park, one of many residences of the Habsburgs in Austria. Each little corner of „ English landscape", neat and styled, emanates not only local respect for cultural heritage, but also the interest of authorities to capitalize it. To see the fact that being proud of the past manifests itself primarily through actions and not in words, has left me a bad taste that I fully understood only when I got home, where „good news" was waiting for me: a parking by the fortress wall side. I have to admit that I had to read several times the article on recent intervention on the archaeological site of Sarmizegetusa Regia in order to become aware of the fact that it is not a capitalist-surrealist joke. Romanians' obsession for front door parking makes havoc outside the city as well. Setting aside, at the moment, some persons' obtuse interests for commercial exploitation of the site through profanation, the current stand calls in question two times the competence of the Ministry of Culture's actual team to take on the specific responsibilities.
First of all it is inacceptable that, even if it's about a monument with an inestimable value from UNESCO patrimony list, the Ministry of Culture does not know what is happening in its courtyard, starting investigations right after irreparable actions. The delicate situation of the site, as part of Grădiştea Muncelului-Ciclovina natural park, makes any legal intervening almost impossible, thus justifying that the monuments are abandoned to "natural degradation" - transferring off-handedly the responsibility between the Ministry of Culture, Environment Ministry and the Local Council. Although Sarmizegetusa Regia is a top destination for gold hunters, none of the (ir)responsible above-mentioned can find funds for securing and supervising efficiently the site. This does not explain totally the fact that the parking works were discovered by accident by a detachment of National Archaeology Commission.
The building machines arrived at the fortress on a road, they passed through some urban places, and they have been seen by some people - assuming that the company that is in charge to furnish the parking / the destruction of the site does not own teleportation equipment. It is hard to believe that no local citizen did find out what was going to happen with the fortress; and in spite of all this, nobody asked himself any question, no light had turned on, any alarm sound. Here lies the second failure of the Ministry of Culture, which did not - or did not try - to sensitize the local population regarding the issue, the importance and the potential of the place. Any discussion about patrimony is derisory, while the one that should be represented by it, that should be proud of it, is not aware of its importance. All debates of the high forums, among architects, archaeologists, restorers, artists, urban designers, etc., are simply and solely in vain, if the local people, those who should be proud of their past, are abandoned - or traded - by authorities to investors which pretend to be high-speed capitalists - may those to lead the poor be happy.
Besides the restrictive constraining laws which guide the actions inside this natural park, a construction motorcade managed to arrive at the gates of the Dacian capital city and to dig as close as half a meter near the fortress wall before being noticed by somebody - it is true, without the embarrassing presence of an archaeologist and, I assume without useless contribution of the architect or landscape designer, as well. As comparison - it is true, a little bit disproportionately - in Zaragoza, Spain - a city built over a roman settlement - in case of an architectural intervention, they have to plan as time frame two years for possible delays or project changes because of archaeological discoveries. For example, for the roman forum discovered during some utilities works in downtown, it was furnished a museum in situ underneath the main square! There the past traces are not only part of the place identity, but also of the citizen identity. Until these remain separated over here in Romania, in the first place because of the lack of education and information of the population and moreover of the local people, affected directly, we will still encounter parking lots built upon "old pieces and rocks", parks overlapped by blocks of flats, tiny ugly cottages which could have remained monuments or rests of the past discarded by excavators buckets.
13.07.2011, Vienna
Eng. Claudiu Silvestru
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