BUCARESDAVA

08Places of BUCARESDAVA

1888

Colțea Hospital

Bucharest’s oldest hospital, shown in 1888, when work was under way on the new building that still stands on Bulevardul Brătianu.

Historical reconstruction of Colțea Hospital in Bucharest in 1888, with its new building under construction
BUCARESDAVA reconstruction, 1888
Shown
1888
Period
Founded 1704, rebuilt from 1888
Status
Working hospital
Location
Bd. I.C. Brătianu 1

01The history

A hospital rebuilt on its old ground.

Mihai Cantacuzino, who had built Colțea Church in 1695–1698, opened the hospital beside it on 14 December 1704. It had 24 beds, twelve for men and twelve for women, and one pharmacist, and it was organised on the model of the Ospedale di San Lazzaro e dei Mendicanti in Venice. It is the oldest hospital in Bucharest.

A fire burned the complex down in 1739, and the earthquake of 1802 damaged it badly. Rebuilt in the late 1830s, the hospital reopened with 60 beds. It was also a place of teaching: Nicolae Kretzulescu founded Wallachia’s first medical school there in 1842, and Carol Davila set up Romania’s first school for nurses there in 1877. In 1869 Karl Storck’s statue of Mihai Cantacuzino went up in the courtyard.

In the 1880s the Eforia Spitalelor Civile, the authority that ran Bucharest’s civil hospitals, rebuilt Colțea once more. In 1888, at the Eforia’s request, the old tower in front of the hospital was pulled down while the new main building was going up. Sources give 1887 or 1888 for the start of the work and dates up to 1897 for its completion, and one names the Austrian architect Josef Schiffeleers. That year the hospital had 210 beds.

  1. 1704

    The hospital opens on 14 December with 24 beds.

  2. 1739

    A fire burns the complex down.

  3. 1842

    Nicolae Kretzulescu founds a medical school here.

  4. 1869

    Karl Storck’s statue of the founder is put up.

  5. 1888

    Colțea Tower is pulled down; the new building is under way.

  6. 1999

    A modernisation of about ten years begins.

02Three ways to read it

What is known, what is told, what is imagined.

I

Documented

The founding in 1704, the first beds, the schools of 1842 and 1877 and the rebuilding of the 1880s are on record. Only the completion date of the new building is uncertain.

II

Legend

The legend of the Swedish soldiers belongs to the tower, not the hospital, and no story has attached itself to the wards. The founder’s end is documented: Mihai Cantacuzino was beheaded in Constantinople in 1716.

III

BUCARESDAVA

The hospital belongs to Chapter VI, set in 1888, the year Colțea Tower disappears from in front of it.

03Today

What remains today.

Colțea is still a working hospital, the Spitalul Clinic Colțea, at Bulevardul I.C. Brătianu 1. It was declared a national monument in 1979 and modernised over about ten years from 1999. Mihai Cantacuzino’s statue stands in the courtyard beside the church.

Sources