Prince Sutu's Villa

If you look at it carefully, from the beach or from the sea, from the sea, it reminds you of an Arabian palace, on the southern shores of the warm Mediterranean. However, the view of the high shore strip on which Constanta is outlined, from the majestic, classic and white hotel "Carol", then passing on the unmistakable silhouette of the Casino, which ennobles this city for more than a century, with the Greek figure of The "Metamorphosis" Church on the background of the minaret of the Royal Mosque and, immediately afterwards, with the sober building of the Armenian Church, can be easily misled. Where are you, actually? In which corner of the world is it possible to walk through Arabia, Greece, Armenia, the British Isles, the French Cote d'Azur on a promenade of a few hundred meters, all against the backdrop of the historic Ottoman crescents and Orthodox crosses?

On land, if you are curious, you can cross Marcus Aurelius Street to the high and steep cliff of the Peninsula to see how, at the end of Krikor Zambaccian Street, former Sea, at number 1, the villa of Prince Suțu awaits its rescuers. The alley with only a few houses, which winds smoothly towards the sea, has bare asphalt, probably left over from the rehabilitation of the Constanta peninsula. No tiles were laid or a new layer of asphalt added, defying most of the rules of architectural and administrative common sense. It would not be the first time that you witness helplessly the mockery of the city administration towards the specific identity of Constanţa, towards its fabulous past. Even if it is beaten by time and eaten carelessly, the Moorish villa has not lost its oriental charm. And he will certainly not lose his last remaining stone. The view is splendid. The sea is still there, because if it doesn't reach the foundation of the building and the stairs that once went down in the water, today end in a concrete parking lot. Nowhere, here, no one wants to show that on a street just a few steps away lived two resonant names of national culture: Mihail Suţu and Cella Serghi, a Greek and a Jew, two people who put Constanţa on a map of personalities to which the poor impotent leaders of current local decisions can scarcely look.

Why it is impossible to rehabilitate a tiny street and why it cannot be announced, through displayed public information, that such a place exists, is impossible to explain. You will hear the eternal groan with lack of staff or funds. Especially since it is no secret: there is no museum memorial house in Constanţa. None. But would it be difficult, how many of the decision-makers of municipal culture, almost all politically trafficked among local leaders, can make a list of the people who have properly honored this city?

Mihail Suţu's villa is the unique Arab history of Constanța. Built in 1899, from the ideas of the architect Grigore Cerchez, who loved his work so much that he built a house with identical elements of the villa, on Callatis Street, at number 6, the prince's residence is, first of all, a house at the sea. He most likely chose a solid part of the cliff, made of rock: he had a choice because the family had bought, immediately after the War of Independence, a large piece of land that stretched from the small courtyard of the house to near the cliff arranged with taste of King Carol I. People said that the modest house, made of wood and stone, built with the consent of the Ottoman administration before 1877, which Grigore Cerchez ordered to be dismantled, also belonged to the Suţu family. Costache Suţu, more precisely, the father of the prince in our story, had been the financial governor of the Moldavian ruler Grigore Alexandru Ghica (1849-1853 and 1854-1856). It is said that the boyar Costache always came to Kustenge with CA Rosetti and Evanghelos Zappa, two Greeks who wrote Romanian history. The former, leader of the National Liberal Party, defined many of the reform programs from the beginning of Carol I's reign and after the Great War of Independence while the eccentric Zeppa, with a fabulous fortune, had convinced King Otto I of Bavaria of Greece ( 1833-1862) to begin the steps for the re-establishment of the Olympic Games, which Athens was to host. Together they had bought an Ottoman kayak, and from the small wooden pier they took long walks on the sea to Sulina or the south of the Bulgarian coast.

The Suţu family gave three rulers to the throne of Moldavia and Wallachia, at the end of the 18th century and before Tudor Vladimirescu's Revolution: Mihail Suţu, with a reign in Moldova (1792-1795) and three in Wallachia (1783-1786, 1791- 1792 and 1801- 1802), another Mihail Suţu, in Moldova (1819-1821) and Alexandru Suţu, with a reign in Moldova (1801-1802) and two in Wallachia (1806 and 1818-1821). The rulers of Suţu, and the whole family, who came to the North of the Danube from Greece, liked to build extremely elegant and valuable buildings as architecture. In Bucharest, in the immediate vicinity of the University Square, a Sutu Palace, a superb expression of the first half of the 19th century, houses the Municipal Museum. There, at the beginning of his reign, Carol and Elisabeta, young sovereigns, used to inaugurate, in autumn, the mundane season with a ball to which all the good people of the capital were invited. Until one day when Carol, without humor, found out from her trusted people that the eccentric lady Suţu's name was Cărluţă.

Grigore Cerchez is one of the creators of the neo-Romanian current, very modern in the Old Kingdom in the first decades of the twentieth century, then continued in the interwar period. On the shores of the Black Sea, in Constanţa, the architect Cerchez changed his mind and thought of a unique architectural monument: a villa above the water, with a Moorish character, most probably inspired by the fabulous world of Syria or Algeria. A massive, steep stone parapet protected the foundation and cellars from the fury of the waves. The house, located on three levels, is ostentatiously facing the sea, as evidenced by the massive stairs that wind down the beach. In a short time, the architects of the "Palace" hotel, as well as those of the "Regnier", will similarly connect the building to the sea.