Romanian Athenaeum (Ateneul Roman)

The Romanian Athenaeum, or Ateneul Roman, is a concert hall on Strada Benjamin Franklin in central Bucharest, Romania, and one of the city's best-loved landmarks. It was built between 1886 and 1888 to designs by the French architect Albert Galleron, with money raised partly through a public subscription campaign under the slogan 'Donate a leu for the Athenaeum', and it opened on 14 February 1888. The building was conceived by the Romanian Athenaeum cultural society, founded in 1865, and it became the home of what is now the George Enescu Philharmonic, named after the composer who is the national symbol of Romanian classical music. Its exterior is a circular neoclassical form fronted by Ionic columns and a dome, while the interior is a round auditorium of roughly 800 seats with a domed ceiling and a continuous fresco running around the walls. The fresco, painted by Costin Petrescu between 1933 and 1938, covers a length of about 75 metres and shows scenes from Romanian history from the Roman conquest of Dacia under Trajan to the Great Union of 1918. The hall is also admired for its acoustics. Visitors can see gilded balconies, a marble foyer and the grand staircase. The building suffered damage during the earthquake of 1940 and the revolution of 1989, when gunfire struck the area, and it was restored over time, notably in the 1990s and again in major works completed in 2000. It remains a working venue, hosting the George Enescu International Festival every second year. The most reliable way to see the interior is to attend a concert, though pre-booked guided tours are offered on some days. Concerts typically run on Thursday and Friday evenings during the season from September to June.