Austrian Bukovina

Ițcani station, today Suceava Nord

Suceava, Ițcani quarter · Stations and railways

by the Austrian contractors C. Gall and F. Ronchetti

The first station the Austrians built in Bukovina and, until 1918, a frontier station of the empire. It has two levels, in the romantic style of central European stations: a rectangular plan, vaults on pointed arches, broken arcades, crenellations and corner turrets, with neo-Gothic touches. It was meant as Austria-Hungary's calling card on the Moldavian border.

Azi It still works as a station, but the building is decayed. The last major repairs were in 1974–1975, and in 2010 the wind tore off 250 square metres of roof.

Sources give different years for the line and for the station building: 1869 for the opening of the Cernăuți–Suceava line, 1871 for the building entering service.

Rădăuți station

Rădăuți, Strada Gării 3 · Stations and railways

by the local railways of Bukovina

The main Cernăuți–Suceava line, opened in 1869, had bypassed important towns of Bukovina, among them Siret and Rădăuți. Local companies were set up to link them to the network, and the station in Rădăuți is the result of that stage.

Azi Trains still stop here. In 2001 it was made over completely, from the façade to the waiting room, and it now looks almost as it did on opening day. It is a listed monument, code SV-II-m-B-05607.

The Dărmănești – Câmpulung Moldovenesc line

along the Soloneț and Moldova valleys · Stations and railways

by the Bukowinaer Lokalbahnen company

Emperor Franz Joseph granted the concession for a branch line from Dărmănești, then Hatna, towards Câmpulung Moldovenesc, then Kimpolung, after both chambers of the imperial Parliament had approved it. It is the line the train to us still runs on.

Azi In use. Anyone coming to Câmpulung by train travels a route decided in Vienna a hundred and forty years ago.

The Huțulca narrow-gauge train, Moldovița

Vatra Moldoviței · Stations and railways

by the forestry railways of Bukovina

A narrow-gauge line, built to bring timber down from the mountain. Today it runs for visitors, with a steam locomotive on the long route and a diesel on the short one.

Azi It still runs, but only in season and only with a ticket booked ahead. You hear the whistle from the village before you see the engine.

Burdujeni station

Suceava, Strada Nicolae Iorga 7 · Stations and railways

by the Italian firm Ceretti e Tanfani

Careful, this is the other side of the coin: this station is not Austrian, it is Romanian. Burdujeni lay on the other side of the border, and the Kingdom of Romania built it as an answer to Ițcani, so that its own frontier station would not be outdone. The plans were inspired by the station in Fribourg, and the marshy ground was consolidated with oak beams.

Azi It is Suceava's main station and one of the best preserved in the country: a red brick façade, ironwork, a ballroom with original features.

Worth seeing one after the other: two stations a few kilometres apart, raised by two empires eyeing each other across the border.

The Spa Casino, Vatra Dornei

Vatra Dornei, the spa park · Spas and casinos

by the Austrian architect Peter Paul Brang

The idea goes back to 1873, to a report by Doctor Denarowschi, who called for a spa casino with conversation rooms, a restaurant and a café. It was built after mayor Vasile Deac travelled to Vienna and convinced the emperor that the resort needed one. Part of the money came from a public collection, to which Franz Joseph himself contributed, the rest from a loan with a Viennese bank. Inside there were gaming rooms, a theatre hall, a library, a confectioner's and a restaurant.

Azi Restored between 2019 and 2023, it works as a museum and cultural centre. Listed monument of national interest, code SV-II-m-A-05670. Opening hours and tickets at cazinoul-bailor.ro.

The town hall of Vatra Dornei

Vatra Dornei, town centre · Spas and casinos

by the Austrian administration of the resort

It belongs to the building wave of 1896–1898, when Vatra Dornei becomes a spa centre of the empire. Its tower is the landmark the whole centre orients itself by.

Azi It is still the town hall, a hundred and thirty years after it went up. Its tower remains the clock the whole town sets itself by.

The Sentinela and Unirea springs, Hotel Carol

Vatra Dornei · Spas and casinos

by the same building campaign

The spring pavilions and the hotel belong to the same spa ensemble laid out to the Austrian recipe: the water, the park, the lodging and the entertainment, all within a few hundred metres of each other.

Azi You see them on foot, in a half-hour walk through the park. People still come to the spring with a bottle, as they did a hundred years ago.

The Administrative Palace, Suceava

Suceava, Strada Ștefan cel Mare 36 · Palaces and administration

by the Viennese architect Peter Paul Brang (1852–1925)

Raised under mayor Franz Des Loges, in baroque style, with a basement, a ground floor and two storeys. Until then the town hall worked in what is today the „Ciprian Porumbescu” Art College. In December 1904 the administration moved here, and the building also housed the town police, the savings bank and the history museum.

Azi Since 1990 the Prefecture and the County Council work here, so the building does roughly what it was meant to do. Rebuilt from the foundations in 2006; from outside you can see it any time.

The same architect designed the Casino in Vatra Dornei: two buildings 80 kilometres apart, by the same hand.

The Popovici manor, today the „Ciprian Porumbescu” Museum

the village of Ciprian Porumbescu, formerly Stupca · Palaces and administration

by the boyar Manolache Popovici

A boyar's house raised in the middle of the village, with symmetrical façades and an isolated setting, which historians place among the neoclassical tendencies of the age, as one of the late readings of the Palladian country villa. Through marriage it passed to Dimitrie cavaler de Costin, of a Bukovinian branch of the family of the chronicler Miron Costin, which had received from Austria the hereditary title of „ritter von Costin”.

Azi It houses the „Ciprian Porumbescu” memorial museum, opened in November 1971: the house the composer lived in stayed a house, only now you can walk into it. Listed monument, code SV-III-m-B-05678.

After being confiscated in the communist period, the building was a school between 1950 and 1970, then a school, a kindergarten and a museum at the same time.

The Cacica salt mine

Cacica, Suceava county · Salt and industry

by the Aulic Chamber, through the commission led by councillor Thadeus Peithner von Lichtenfels

So as to stop importing salt from Moldavia, the Austrian administration surveyed every salt spring in Bukovina, then opened the mine through a vertical shaft, the one now called Ferdinand. It brought miners from Galicia, from Wieliczka and Bochnia, most of them Poles and Roman Catholics. Until 1803 the descent was made in woven baskets, straight down the shaft. The salt was cut with the pickaxe, without explosives, and that is why the galleries have survived whole.

Azi Open to visitors all year. The route runs about 500 metres, and 192 wooden steps take you down to the chapel of Saint Barbara. Underground you also see the Orthodox chapel and the salt lake, dug by hand.

The chapel of Saint Barbara was opened in 1806, on the initiative of the Polish priest Jakub Bogdanowicz, and is the first of its kind in a Romanian salt mine. Sources give slightly different depths for it, between 21 and 29 metres.

The basilica at Cacica

Cacica, next to the salt mine · Salt and industry

by the architect Teodor Talowski, of Lviv

Raised by the Catholic community gathered around the salt mine, of pressed red brick and dressed stone, to a design that came from Galicia. It is the only neo-Gothic building in the whole circuit.

Azi A national Marian sanctuary, and since 2000 a minor basilica. On 15 August the courtyard cannot hold the crowd.

The former Solca monastery, turned brewery

Solca, Suceava county · Salt and industry

by the Austrian administration

After the monastery was suppressed, the buildings became a warehouse, then a brewery. Ever since, Solca has been known throughout Bukovina for beer and mineral water. It is the strangest effect of the Josephine reforms in the area: a monastery turned into a factory.

Azi The monks came back only in 2000, after two hundred and fifteen years in which the buildings were anything but a monastery.