If you go to sector 4 between the metro stations Unirii and Tineretului, you will not find anything interesting, just blocks and blocks again, the same impersonal Bucharest. And yet somewhere here the capital was born, here is the true zero kilometer.
With this information and a GPS you can go to 33 Radu Voda Street. Preferably on a day when there is a service in the church, otherwise your curiosity will only be quenched by a high iron fence. Beyond the fence is another warm church, kind of like a hug nailed between standardized buildings – which thankfully are now colored, or you’d have the feeling of an endless plain. But any effort to reach this address is worthwhile, because it is the church of Bucur the Shepherd, the point from which a city began to develop that would later become the country’s capital.
Those who understand the Bucur Church also understand Bucharest, beautiful and ugly, happy and sad, dusty, modern and traditional at the same time. An urban architect would never have built a city in the middle of the plain, but Romania had more than 90% of its population in rural areas until about two centuries ago, and the roots of the big cities are still linked to the village, as in the case of the Shafard capital.
What fate the church of Bucur had and has. In the shadow of the monastery Radu Voda, crowded with communist blocks, inconveniently located, not in a space that would be the center of attention. Being a sign of non-recognition of the peasant ancestry of Romanians? Too bad, this little church symbolizes great beauty through a sweet and warm modesty. The story so well told by Ionescu Gion says: “Bucur the shepherd – some told with emotion – grazed his sheep, on the forest hills of Dambovita, and built here, on the banks of a brook, a wooden church to be a place of prayer to the Good God for himself and his heirs”. As it has no connection with the Negru Voda Monastery, and even Nicolae Iorga affirms that it is the first building of the capital, there is a truth.
And how can you not want to see the zero point of the capital of the country, which offers you all the possible Romanian warmth. Looking at the church from a distance, you feel like you are going to a safe place, the facades are straight, proportioned to give the feeling of peace, and the fact that they are painted white creates the background for any story of shepherds, good or bad, thanking God for the life they have and wishing for a home, a place where the haste of fate can take a break. The tradition of Romanian houses prescribes the presence of a porch, and the Bucur church has the most inviting porch in the country. The tower is not big, but simple and with wide eaves, as if to say that God watches over the city, although it is in the wind path of the plain.
Somehow the fate of the church of Bucur is connected with the fate of the capital. Regardless of history, it has endured, regardless of the existence of a greater place of worship, Negru Voda Monastery, or Ceausescu’s desire to erase any trace of a history greater than his own. In his desire to create communist neighborhoods, with buildings with apartments devoid of any personality, where people could be transformed into a “new man,” a man without any desire, without initiative, except that of the “great leader,” he naturally put this little church on the demolition schedule. How this church escaped demolition remains a mystery, but legends abound. One is that an architect hid it in a larger architectural plan and Ceausescu could not read it. Another, that the layout of the neighborhood was so small that the church went unnoticed. Somehow its small size saved it, the sincerity of its construction, its gratitude to God rather than His glory.
The moment you pass the fence that looks like it hides an armory, you feel like you are coming home,to that indefinable home, the place where you feel God loves you, and heaven is your friend, and every road, whether it’s horizontal or vertical, is open.
