Bucharest Centennial: Louis Blanc, the Swiss architect who changed the capital’s image

Romania-Insider.com has started a series of articles about Bucharest landmarks of architecture or history, which have witnessed the last century of what is now the Romanian capital, and noteworthy people who have helped build the Romanian capital as it is today. This project is supported by the Bucharest City Hall through the Public Monuments and Touristic Heritage Administration (AMPT), within the cultural program Bucharest-Centennial.

Check the full series of articles dedicated to the Centennial on Romania-Insider.com here. Although he was born in Switzerland and went to school in France, the Swiss architect Pierre Louis Blanc designed buildings of major importance in Bucharest. He contributed to the beautification and development of the capital of the new kingdom ruled by Carol I, the first king of Romania. He designed symbolic buildings for the urban architecture at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Among them, the Faculty of Medicine building and the imposing palace in downtown Bucharest which hosts the Ministry of Agriculture. Louis Blanc was born in 1860 in Geneva, where he also attended the secondary school and high school. He continued his studies at the Polytechnic University in Zürich. He was 20 years old when he began studying architecture, attending the courses of the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This is where he met his good colleague and friend Ion Mincu, who will become a representative architect of Romania. Most likely, their friendship was the main reason why Blanc decided to turn his attention to Bucharest, where he arrived in 1884, immediately after obtaining the architect diploma. Once arrived in the capital of the kingdom ruled by King Carol I, Louis Pierre Blanc began his career at the Ministry of Culture and Public Instructions, where he initially collaborated with engineer George Duca, working on projects such as the Botanical Institute and the University of Iași. Although he worked for less than 20 years in Romania, the Swiss architect succeeded in becoming one of the most important architects of Bucharest at the end of the 19th century. The relations created through his two marriages (the first with Elena Șuțu – a member of the princely Șuțu family and the second with Irina Berindei - daughter of the general Anton Berindei), facilitated his access to contracts and contacts with the high Romanian society of the time. Louis Blanc was the one who introduced the French neo-Renaissance in Bucharest buildings, although he was a supporter of the neo-classical beaux-arts style. The buildings designed by Louis Blanc are monumental, both the public and the private ones. He built, among others, some of the major public buildings that the new state needed, such as the buildings of the