Inside Bucharest’s Accidental Urban Wilderness
In Romania’s capital, a failed communist-era megaproject has become a template for a new generation of “natural parks” that offer room for wildlife and people.
In late November 2006, the Romanian naturalist Vlad Cioflec set off through the streets of Bucharest in search of the European pond turtle. Armed with a tourist map of the city he’d found in his father’s glovebox, he was drawn to a large, unmarked area — a square-ish patch just south of the city’s center.
The place was named Vacaresti, after the 18th century monastery complex that was reduced to rubble in the 1980s as part of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s scheme to build a gigantic artificial lake. Like many of the grandiose urban planning follies that the communist leader inflicted on the city — such as the Palace of the Parliament, Europe’s largest building — the concrete-lined pit was hugely ambitious and poorly designed. As hydrologists struggled to figure out how to fill it with water, Ceausescu was overthrown and, on Christmas Day of 1989, abruptly shot.