Noutăți din arhivele moscovite: Planul Harting și planul general al Bucureștilor și împrejurimilor (1807-1812)
New discoveries from the Moscow archives: The Harting plan and the general plan of Bucharest and its surroundings (1807-1812)

Summary/Abstract: In this study we publish and analyze a few plans of Bucharest recently discovered in the Military-Historical Archive of Moscow. These plans capture quite well the evolution of the capital of the Wallacian principality in the years that followed the previous war that affected this region, from 1789-1791, since the last known plans of this city were kept. Although Bucharest was significantly affected by a series of natural or man-made calamities – and here we refer to the October 1802 earthquake, the September 1804 fire, and the Dâmboviţa floods of 1805 – yet the city continued to grow. Proof of this is the churches built during these years. For the years 1807-1812, of the Russian occupation, we propose the following evolution of the plans of Bucharest: 1. the plan drawn by Andreas Gaudi, at the request of the generals Michelson and Miloradovici, today unidentified; 2. a topographically adapted and improved version of the Gaudi plan, in French, drawn by the general engineer Harting and his subordinates; 3. different versions, in Russian, also prepared by Harting and his team; 4. the final plan, made either towards the end of the occupation in Bucharest, or even later, at St. Petersburg, which uses all the data gathered by surveyors during their stay in the capital of Wallachia. By presenting the French version, which we believe was very close to Gaudi's initial sketch, and the final plan, we made a significant contribution to a better knowledge of the topography of Bucharest from the period before the introduction of the Organic Regulation.

• Details
• Contents