History of Buzău

According to Romanian archaeologist

Several graves (3rd to 5th centuries) were found in Buzău, as well as coins that prove the presence of a settlement on the territory of the modern city.

The earliest mention of Buzău as a market town (

In 1571, the Banu monastery was erected. The monastery's name, "Banu", indicates the nobility title of its builder,

A 1575 document mentions the bazaar (permanent market with shops, stores, cellars, storage rooms). The Bazaar of Buzău was the second oldest in Wallachia. At the end of the 16th century, Buzău was divided in four parts: the bishopric with its servants, the Banu monastery and its servants, the old market and the city (located between the bishopric and the monastery).

During the last decade of the 16th century, around 18,000

The late Middle Ages brought a wave of destruction to the town, Buzău being completely or partially destroyed by multiple wars and foreign military invasions, as well as natural disasters.

The army of

They pillaged the plains around Buzău, Brăila, Bucharest and other cities which the Turks had either left untouched or not completely destroyed, took the locals captive and stole all the year's income, burning down most of the places.^[4]

In April 1616, many houses in Buzău were burnt down during a Polish invasion, during one of the Moldavian Magnate Wars. The inhabitants took refuge in the nearby mountains and forests. All existing land deeds were lost at the event. One year later, in July 1617, the city was once again occupied by the Ottoman army.

Buzău was pillaged by Tatars again in 1623, as pointed out by Matei Basarab in a 1633 letter:

[The Bishopric of Buzău] is entirely deserted, enslaved and burnt by the heathen Tatars during all these years.^[5]

The cholera and bubonic plague epidemics at the beginning of the 19th century also decimated the city's population (see Caragea's plague).

The last time the city was devastated by war was in 1821 at the Greek War of Independence.^[9] After that, in light of the establishment of the Organic Regulations, a period of reconstruction and modernisation began. Also, Wallachia stopped being a theatre of operations in the wars between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, the conflicts moving further away, in Crimea, the Southern and Western Balkans and the Caucasus.

Thus, although Buzău's name is attested by documents as a river with a polis on its banks, since the 4th century, and as a market town since 1431, the oldest building in the city is the Vergu-Mănăilă house, erected as recently as the 18th century, around 1780. The

During the 19th century, the city overcame the difficulties of repeated reconstruction, and started to develop as a modern city with solid businesses and a cultural life. The Crâng forest became a leisure place for the locals around 1829, and was eventually organized as a public garden by 1850.

Schools began to be set up, as in 1831 the bishopric opened a school for

Around 1837–1840, public lighting was introduced on the main street. The street lamps were using tallow candles. By 1861, the number of public street lamps grew from 38 to 50. In 1841 the streets were realigned "by urban rules".^[10]

By 1842, the city had a stable doctor, a drugstore, a fire squad and an officially authorised midwife.

During the

At the Ad-hoc divans organised after the

Cultural life blossomed, as in 1852, the first theater show in Buzău took place. In 1854, a printing press was imported by the bishopric from Vienna, and was subsequently used to print the Buzău Bible, the fourth Romanian bible (the first three being the Bucharest Bible in 1688, one printed in Blaj in 1792 and another printed in Saint Petersburg in 1819).

Public lighting was enhanced in 1860 by introducing petrol lamps. In the same year, street numbers were assigned to houses, and streets were paved with stones. The Gârlași Hospital (nowadays, the Infectious Diseases Hospital) was open in 1865, being the first permanent city hospital.

The Moldavia theater was open in 1898 in a building in central Buzău. The 400 seats hall was the location where important Romanian artists that came to Buzău, such as

In 1899, mayor Nicu Constantinescu began the construction of the Communal Palace, a project completed in 1903. The Communal Palace is now the city's most prominent landmark. Constantinescu also decided to refactor the central streets of Buzău, which were narrow and winding, a heritage of the market town history and the repeated destructions followed by disorganized rebuilding of the city. Thus, the wide and straight Park Boulevard (linking the city center and the Crâng Park) and the Railway Station Boulevard (linking the center to the railway station) were built.

During this period, Constantin Brâncuși and Ion Luca Caragiale were briefly residents of Buzău. Caragiale leased a restaurant near the railway station in 1894 and lived there for a year. During this period, he also held a public conference, whose intended subject, Prose writing techniques was changed at the last moment into Causes of human stupidity.^[13] Brâncuși lived in the city in the summer of 1914, after Eliza Seceleanu, a young local landowner's widow, had commissioned him to create two sculptures: Prayer and the bust of Petre Stănescu, her late husband. After creating the two sculptures in Paris, Brâncuși brought them to Buzău and lived there for a few months while working to prepare the sculptures' stands. Both sculptures decorated Stănescu's tomb at the local Dumbrava cemetery for a while, but they were since moved to the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, being replaced by two copies.^[14] The copies have been stolen in 1999 and have not been replaced since.

The first electric light bulb in the city was installed in 1899, in front of the public garden in the center of Buzău. The first cinema show in Buzău took place in 1904, in a beer pub on the Park Boulevard, by a local named Nicolae Mihăilescu.^[15]

During World War I, the city was occupied, from 14 December 1916 to 14 November 1918, by German forces, and many of the inhabitants took refuge in Moldavia or in the country side. Buzău returned to Romanian administration at the end of the war.

After 1918, Buzău continued to develop, slowly becoming an industrial centre. Also, a football team, named Vârtejul was created in 1921, and the first boxing match in Buzău took place in 1931, when a sports newspaper was first printed.

The most important mayor of Buzău between the two world wars was

An eagle, nicknamed Ilie by the locals and raised by a salesman who lived nearby was the railway station's mascot between 1930 and 1943. Ilie came to the train station often, and ate out of people's hands. The eagle died during World War II, shot by Nazi soldiers. A beer brewed in Buzău was named Vulturul (The eagle), and a street in Buzău was named Strada Vulturului (Eagle Street) in his memory.^[17]

During World War II, Soviet troops occupied Buzău in August 1944, and, as German soldiers were barricaded inside the Communal Palace, its tower was knocked down by cannons. The tower was rebuilt after the war. Heavy fighting took place in the area after August 23, 1944, when Marshal Ion Antonescu was arrested in Bucharest and his pro-Nazi government overthrown. The Heroes' Cemetery, which lies in the western part of the city, is the burial ground of the Soviet, German, and Romanian soldiers who died at that time.

After the war, when Romanian government was taken over by a

All the factories in Buzău were nationalised and the central government in Bucharest ran a policy of building monotonous and drab

Forced industrialization took place during the communist regime, as the Buzău-South industrial platform was inaugurated in 1963. The location was chosen as to use some barren land and to have the local winds move the pollution away from the city.

However, some city improvements have also been made during this period. The Tineretului Park was built in the eastern side of the city, with a sports hall and a swimming pool.

Construction work for an Orthodox cathedral, called the St. Sava Cathedral, was started in 1991. In 1995, a theater was opened once again in Buzău, and called the George Ciprian Theater.

In 2021, there was a proposal to unite Buzău with the commune of Țintești. This project, known as "Buzău Mare 2021" ("Greater Buzău 2021"), aimed to double Buzău in size and to develop the city more extensively once united with Țintești. This new Buzău would have some 120,000 inhabitants and the planned A7 motorway would go through the middle of the city. The idea came from the mayor of Buzău, Constantin Toma.^[21] On 26 September 2021, a referendum was done to decide if Buzău and Țintești would be united or not, and 43.03% of the inhabitants of Țintești voted on it. However, only 10.03% of those of Buzău did so, and due to the low turnout, below the legal threshold of 30%, the results were considered null and Țintești and Buzău remained separate.^[22]

• Petcu, Gheorghe; Constantin Stan; Doina Ciobanu, Constanța Tănase and Doina Filoti (2002). Municipiul Buzău. Monografie (in Romanian). Buzău: Editura Alpha.
  ISBN 973-8054-59-1
  .