Near the Tineretului Park, on the spot where merchants now sell their gadgets and food to-go, some 13 years ago there used to be an imposing establishment that the "gunnery detail" commandeered by Ceausescu's insane mind tried for weeks to bring down. The dynamite and the bulldozers troubled the peace of southern Bucharest inhabitants. They thought that this was a good thing for the edifice had been used as prison and this was (in their minds) an act of justice. In reality the superb building had no guilt for the fact that it had hosted a jail. Moreover, it was originally intended as a monastery, the greatest Bucharest had ever seen. Nicolae Mavrocordat, the one who opened the so-called "Greek Kings century," built the monastery as soon as he regained control of he ruler seat of the Romanian Country (a province of old-days Romania) in 1719. The ruler bought the land from the owners, the Vacaresti boyars, with his own money and erected the monastery that was to harbour his extensive library and his tomb. When he died of pest he was buried here, under a slab of rock bearing the Mavrocordat crest - a Phoenix. History is not a daughter of mythology, or if it is then it must be a mean one - the Phoenix rose from its ashes only for 21 years, the length of time Constantin Mavrocordat ruled. No member of this lineage ever tried to put his or her name on the edifice and thus it was called Vacaresti, as a sign of appreciation for the local boyars. The modern times came and the Royal House made room for the less understanding communists that, in the name of atheism, torn down churches and even art monuments if they presented a slight religious propensity. A half century later, we had the chance to meet the last bearer of the Phoenix crest - the Prince Ion Mavrocordat, a direct descendant of the lineage. Beyond his family's drama, the same as every other boyar's, he told us two stories that need no comment: "When I was born I was a Prince... a year later I was a beggar. My parents had been deported to Dumbrava Sibiului, the same location my ancestor, Nicolae Mavrocordat had been deported a century ago. I have seen the Vacaresti monastery during repair works that it underwent in 1984. I have seen then the earthly remains of my ancestors that were buried here. This is the place where - ultimate irony - my parents had been imprisoned after the place had been turned into a prison. Every time I close my eyes I see those walls that wouldn't come down even if the bulldozers worked round the clock for weeks on end. I still hear the wails of the walls trying to resist the dynamite. I never want to witness something like that again." We know that at a certain moment pieces of the monastery and even full size columns from it could be seen in the yard of the Cotroceni Palace. Perhaps they were to be used in some construction the communists wished to erect ... like their homes.
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