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Grandma Wagner (who was visiting from the USA) and Susan went to check things out in April of '04 and the pictures below of are our whirlwind trip to Timisoara. |
Timisoarans are proud of the fact that their city is refered to as 'Primul Oras Liber' (First Free Town). They were the first to rebel against the dictator Ceausescu. Timisoara is also called the City of Flowers because it has so many parks ringing its city center. Here, Grandma sits by the fountain in the Piata Victorei. Romanian is a Romance language and resembles Italian and Spanish more so than any Slavic tongue. However (as we learned during our trip in October) the Romanians did not use the Latin alphabet until the middle of the 19th century: all writing before then was in Cyrillic. 
We saw a young children's dance competition in front of the Opera house in the Piata Victorei |
There are three Piatas in the city center: Victorei, Libertii and Unirii. This is the Statue of St. Nepomuk and the Virgin Mary in the Piata Libertii. She was made in Vienna in 1756 and brought to Romania via the Danube. She was built in memory of those that died in the plague that devastated the area between 1738-1739. 
This is Piata Unirri - the heart of the old town. It has a definite feel of the old Austrio-Hungarian Empire. The square is flanked by the huge Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Church (both built in 1754). Mom and I just missed Mass this day and enjoyed the sight of young girls in traditional Romanian costume walking around in the square and lots of parishioners talking after service. The column was erected in the late 1700's and is another monument built in thanks for survival from the plague. |
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