Hello all, I decided to post this on Lemmy too, and this community seems to be the best place for it - and represents an opportunity to revive this community.

So this weekend, during the renovation works being done on the main building of the University of Bucharest, the statue of the crowned eagle and the two gargoyles flanking it were restored, more than 80 years after they had been destroyed following WW2 bombings.

Below is the eagle and one of the gargoyles before being towed up and fixed in place:

And here is the eagle being mounted (I couldn’t find any public pics with the gargoyles. If you want, I can take a walk tomorrow to the place and if I can see them, I’ll take a pic):

The three sculptures are part of an entire sculptural ensemble named “Minerva Protecting the Arts and Sciences.” (which is now being fully restored). The original work was designed by architect Alexandru Orăscu and commissioned to Karl Storck between 1862 and 1869.

Following the Allied bombings of April 1944, the building was partly destroyed, and the ensemble was severely damaged:

After the end of WW2, the whole main building of the University was rebuilt, except for the central body:

In 1966, the central body was rebuilt as well, completing the building once again, but in a more simple form, with fewer decorations. It held the same aspect until a few years ago, when the building went into renovations:

and a detail view of the former look:

The replicas that were fitted this Saturday morning were made from bronze cast in wax. The eagle is weighing in approximately 1 ton and the two gargoyles are weighing 300 kg each - that makes for a total weight of 1.6 tons. The three sculptures were made by sculptor Alexandru Siminic, together with his collaborators, Teodor and Ștefan Siminic.

As a personal note, I graduated from the faculty holding its classes in that exact part of the building, so the fact that this is now being restored to the original design can only make me so much more proud of it. :)

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