Documented
What records, historical research or archaeology can support.
Historical SF Novel · Volume I
BUCARESDAVA
The same ground.
A different city.
A historical SF thriller about the layers beneath Bucharest. Volume I follows the history of Bucharest from AD 105 to 1916, through the mysterious object that surfaces century after century near the Dâmbovița river.
The preview is shared through the BUCARESDAVA Archive, free.
A novel set across the centuries of Bucharest
- Volume
- I · The City Underneath
- Eras
- Eight, from AD 105 to 1916
- Setting
- The banks of the Dâmbovița
- Editions
- Romanian and English
01The book
Bucharest, seen and told through a different perspective.
“I wrote BUCARESDAVA because Bucharest’s history deserves to be told through stories, not merely recorded in historical documents. My goal is to bring that history to life in a novel that readers will want to follow from beginning to the end.”
The novel brings real places and events into a story of mystery, fiction and thriller. Each chapter begins with a place, a record, a legend or a trace the city has left behind.
02How the story is made
Three ways to read the city.
Urban Legends
Stories handed down with a different degree of certainty.
BUCARESDAVA
Fiction that brings these layers together and create a new world.
03The city
One river, one city,
eight layers of history.
The Dâmbovița river connects lives separated by centuries on the same ground. Each date opens another layer of the city and another chapter of the story.
- AD 105
Before Bucharest, a settlement beside a wild Dâmbovița.
- 1459
The moment Bucharest enters the written record.
- 1595
A wooden city caught in war and fire.
- 1704
Bucharest beneath the rule of Constantin Brâncoveanu.
- 1813
A city living through plague, fear and loss.
- 1888
The old city begins to disappear.
- 1907
A new century of unrest, séances and uncertainty.
- 1916
World War I reaches the capital.
04The real city
Places of BUCARESDAVA
The story is fictional but the city beneath it's real.
BUCARESDAVA is rooted in real places across Bucharest. Some still exist, others have disappeared, while others have changed so dramatically that the city around them bears little resemblance to the one described in the novel.
Explore the history behind these places, discover how they appeared in different periods, and see what remains of them today.
-
The Dâmbovița
The river as it may have looked around AD 105, long before Bucharest. The same river runs through every era of BUCARESDAVA.
-
Șerban Vodă Inn
Built by Prince Șerban Cantacuzino as a fortified inn for merchants, with shops, cellars and warehouses. Demolished in 1883.
-
Podul Calicilor
The Beggar’s Bridge: a street paved with wooden beams south of the Dâmbovița, named after the poor who lived and begged along it.
-
Colțea Tower
Once one of Bucharest’s defining landmarks, demolished as the old city gave way to the modern capital.
-
Colțea Hospital
Founded in 1704 beside Colțea Tower and rebuilt from 1888, the year the tower came down. It is still a working hospital.
-
The National Bank of Romania
The bank’s palace, completed in 1890 on the site of the old Șerban Vodă Inn, in the merchant quarter around Lipscani Street.
Explore monuments, vanished landmarks, streets and landscapes that connect the fictional world of BUCARESDAVA with the real history of Bucharest.
Explore all places
05Chapter I
The novel begins beside a river, before there is a city.
In AD 105, Bucharest does not yet exist. On the banks of a wild Dâmbovița river, a boy named Duras encounters an object he has already seen in a dream, one that will reappear across centuries.
Join the BUCARESDAVA Archive to receive a preview of the Chapter I when delivery is active.
06Archive
From the archive
Files on the places, events and historical layers behind the novel, released one by one for Archive readers.
Bucaresdava, 105
The landscape before the city: river, a modest Geto-Dacian settlement, movement, and the limits of what we know.
In preparationThe Princely Court
The court, the document of 20 September 1459, and the moment Bucharest enters the written record.
In preparationBucharest in 1595
War, Ottoman occupation, fire, and the destruction of a predominantly wooden city.
In preparationThe Dâmbovița
The river before regulation transformed its course, its banks and its relationship with the entire city.
In preparationColțea Tower, 1888
The demolition of a landmark and the transformation of old Bucharest into a modern capital.
In preparation
07Beneath the city
The city did not vanish, it settled into layers.
Curtea Domnească, Mihai Vodă church, Radu Vodă church, the Dâmbovița: places best seen across more than one period. The project map will set documented traces beside the routes of the Bucaresdava universe.
Map in preparation
08The universe
More ways into BUCARESDAVA
- Vol. IThe City Underneath
The City Underneath
Novel
Launching soon - Vol. IIThe City Remembered
The City Remembered
Novel
In progress - CompendiumCompendium
Compendium
Editorial Compendium
In progress - ChroniclesChronicles
Chronicles
Graphic Stories
In progress - FilesFiles
Files
Editorial Research
In progress - PlatesPlates
Maps and Plates
Reconstructions and prints
In progress