Peleş Castle

One simply can not visit Sinaia without seeing Peleş (PEH-lesh). Perched upon a rolling green hill and set against the stark beauty of the Carpathian mountains, this magnificent castle appears to have been extracted directly from a Grimm Brothers' fairy tale.

The first king of Romania, Carol I, visited Sinaia in 1866 to stay at the monastery, and fell in love with the place. Seven years later he bought the grounds and had Wilhelm Doderer, a German architect, build the palace in 1873 as a retreat from the summer heat in Bucharest. After the work was done in 1883, Carol immediately ordered an expansion to be built, finished in 1914.

Peleş Castle can be considered one of Romania's most important museums in the country. The castle was built in wood, stone, bricks and marble and comprises more than 160 rooms. The representative style used is German Renaissance, but one can easily discover elements belonging to the Italian Renaissance, Gothic, German Baroque and French Rococo style. Tour guides are quick to point out that Peleş was the first castle in Europe to have both electricity and central heating. For one of the numerous tours in English or other foreign languages, enter the special foreigners door to your right in the courtyard, skipping the lines or Romanians.

Quite outstanding are the Big Armoury Room, the small Armoury Room, the Florentine Room, the Reception Room (where paintings and wooden sculptures depicting 16 castles of the Hohenzollerns are exhibited), the Moresque Room, The French Room, the Turkish Room, the Council Room, the Concert Room as well as the Imperial Suite. It is also worth mentioning other exquisite attractions such as the statues, the ceramics, the gold and silver plates, the Meissen and Sevres porcelain, as well as the extensive weapon collections.

Peleş is surrounded by seven terraces decorated with statues (sculptured by the Italian, Romanelli), stone-made-wells, ornamental vases and Carara marble. The architects used an abundance of wooden decoration, both for the exterior and for the interior of the castle, which confers a very special quality to the building.

Pelişor

To the initial castle, the Czech architect Karel Liman added, during 1896-1914, Pelişor (PEH-lee-shor), a small castle with 70 rooms. The Pelişor Castle was inhabited by the princely couple, Ferdinand and Maria, beginning with 1903. The climax of their reign was in 1918, when, after the First World War, Romania regained the historical provinces of Basarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania, Maria was a strong personality of the epoch. Being at the same time a poetess, a painter, a design creator, she was surnamed the Artist Queen. Endowed with a wide open spirit towards fine arts, she understood profoundly the most predominant phenomenon in the epoch, the Art-Nouveau, a style chosen by the Queen for the decoration of the residence in Sinaia. As far as fine arts of 1900 were concerned, they represented for Maria a fight and revolt weapon against the sterility of historicism. She imposed her personal style, characterized by eclecticism and bringing togheter the Art-Nouveau elements and influences of Byzantine and especially Celtic origin. Thus, the undeniably valuable and unique Golden Bedroom, the Chapel and the Golden Room took shape.

Near Peleş there is Foişorul, a kings' residence with 42 rooms designed in the Swiss style. After a horrible fire (in 1931), it was rebuilt at the request of Carol II.