Documented
Its dates, height and demolition are recorded, and Ludwig Angerer photographed it in 1856. An inscribed stone from the tower is kept at the National Museum of Romanian History.
07Places of BUCARESDAVA
Colțea Tower
Once one of Bucharest’s defining landmarks, demolished as the old city gave way to the modern capital.
- Shown
- 1888
- Period
- 1714 to 1888
- Status
- Lost
- Location
- Bd. I.C. Brătianu, Piața Universității
01The history
The tower that watched the city.
The tower was built in 1709–1714 as the bell tower of the Colțea ensemble, which Mihai Cantacuzino had begun with a church in 1695–1698 and a hospital inaugurated in 1704. It stood about 50 metres high; some sources say 54. For most of its life it was described as the tallest building in Bucharest.
It had three floors under the roof, a clock and a bell of about 1,700 kg cast in 1775, and watchmen used it to look out for fires. The earthquake of October 1802 brought down its top and the clock, and the upper floors were rebuilt in wood. Further earthquakes in 1829 and 1838 weakened it again.
In 1888, with the tower judged unstable and the street being widened for what became Bulevardul Brătianu, Mayor Emilian Pake-Protopopescu approved its demolition. Barbu Delavrancea wrote against it, and a newspaper named after the tower petitioned the prime minister. It came down that year.
- 1698
Mihai Cantacuzino’s Colțea Church is finished.
- 1704
Colțea Hospital is inaugurated.
- 1714
The tower is completed.
- 1775
Its 1,700 kg bell is cast.
- 1802
An earthquake brings down the top and the clock.
- 1888
The tower is demolished.
02Three ways to read it
What is known, what is told, what is imagined.
Legend
Swedish soldiers of Charles XII, sheltering in the Ottoman Empire after their defeat at Poltava in 1709, are said to have built it. The story is told in Franz Josef Sulzer’s account of 1787; some writers take it as fact, others as tradition.
BUCARESDAVA
The tower belongs to Chapter VI, set in 1888, the year the old city begins to disappear.
03Today
What remains today.
Bulevardul I.C. Brătianu runs over its foundations, about 20 metres from Colțea Church, just off Piața Universității. The church and Colțea Hospital still stand. A stone that once marked the foundations is now under the asphalt, and a plaque near the church recalls the tower.