For the cultural identity and history of the municipality, respectively of Constanța county, the Museum of National History and Archeology of Constanța is all the more important as today it remains the only place where tourists, especially foreigners, can find information about the history of these lands. .

On the other hand, this museum must also be seen in terms of the institution that manages, preserves and enhances the past of Constanța. Try a sinister exercise and imagine what it would be like if the museum collapsed in an earthquake, caught fire or simply destroyed, and with it, almost all the evidence of the history of those who passed, disappeared, disappeared. stopped and conquered the lands of the oldest city in Romania?

Constanța City Hall, today the Museum of National History and Archeology, in 1921. (photo: Facebook / Constanta… from the past)

Over the decades, the importance of the museum has seemed to be symbolically punctuated by events or decisions of the authorities whose consequences can be observed even today: In the current building of the museum, Constanța City Hall functioned. In 1957, the authorities decided to move the cultural institution to the most important administrative institution. It was no coincidence that the event took place in the year in which the bicentennial of the birth of the great Latin poet Ovid was celebrated.

Another clue that gives us important information about the vision of the local administration before the First World War is that, for the population of those times, the town hall building was huge. A building of such large proportions for the only 27,000 inhabitants of Constanta shows us that the huge development potential of the city at the beginning of the 20th century encouraged the local authorities to foresee a grand future for the seaside city.

Therefore, the architect Victor Ștefănescu, one of the leading representatives of the Romanian elite at the turn of the century, manages, after hard and exhausting work, to perfectly combine detailed details for the impeccable project based on which the jewel of Ovidiu Square was to be built.

4 years after the completion of the building in Ovidiu Square, another jewel was built, this time, on the edge of the wild beach in Mamaia resort. At the request of Queen Maria, in 1924, the Royal Palace was built, in the same neo-Romanian style, like the former town hall in Ovidiu Square. As an irony of fate, today, both pearls of ante and interwar architecture are on the verge of ruin.

Thus, at the beginning of the 1900s, the city of Constanța was flanked, at its ends, by two buildings, whose architectural imprint had more Romanian details than ever: the nucleus of the administration and the residence of the royalty. It is no coincidence that both imposing buildings were oriented and opened their gates to the Black Sea. What does the sea mean for Constanța at the beginning of the 20th century? Why could you enter the buildings with the most important roles at that time just coming from the sea? In what context did the architects turn their gaze and, implicitly, the plans of the buildings towards the infinite blue horizon? It remains the duty of every curious reader to find out the answers to these questions, to reflect and unravel the mysterious connection between the new architectural trends and the Black Sea, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Another symbolic confirmation of the importance of the institution was the decision to move the museum to the heart of old Constanța. The statue of Ovid, which seems to greet foreign tourists exiles by the waves of the Black Sea in Constanța, is located exactly in the center of the old city, the epicenter of the cultural, spiritual and economic life of the cosmopolitan city over the centuries.

Also here, in Ovidiu Square, you can still see the traces of the struggle between East and West, the two civilizations that have clashed countless times over the centuries and have constantly sought to gain supremacy in the culture, mentality and economy of the locals.

One of the keys that opened the gate to the West is symbolically represented in a detail of the current museum building: the clock tower. Symbol of the city's opening to the West, the only building in the city built with this clock tower subtly marks, at the beginning of the 20th century, the transition from the metaphors of the Orient to the dynamism and elegance of the West.

So, the statue of Ovid, the oldest piece in the square that bears his name, and the museum in its shadow, seem to open the cultural Constance to foreign tourists who are more inclined to the history of places and more interested in spiritual and socio-cultural elements. of the communities they visit.