On the northwest coast of the Black Sea, beyond even where the Emperor Augustus banished Ovid, lies the Romanian town of Tulcea. Like many Romanian cities, it was a focal point for the confluence of a dizzying array of cultures: Slavic, Latin, Greek, Turkish, Jewish, Tatar, Armenian, and more. And, like cities everywhere, its social fabric was reflected and transmitted in its built environment. It was a remembered past and a lived present in stone and wood. Thirty years after the fall of the regime that “systematized” its urban core, one of the country's leading architects reflects on the cityscape that shaped his childhood in Tulcea and offers quiet hope for its future.

Cultural confidence and the liberal death wish