PRINCELY COURT TÂRGOVIŞTE

Huntsmen Gate or Dealu Gate – as it is called - It is a medieval vestige of the 18th century, what was part of Royal Citadel fortification. It is called ”Huntsmen” or ”Dealu”, because it allowed the exit to Dealu Monastery. The great importance of this historical vestige is also given by fact that from all five medieval gates of Citadel: Huntsmen Gate - Dealu Gate, Buzău Gate, Bucharest Gate, Argeș and Câmpulung Gate, just this and Bucharest Gate are the only ones left. Huntsmen Gate or Dealu Gate represents a tourist attraction and makes the transition to other points of greatest attraction from Târgoviște City: Chindia Tower and ”Royal Court” National Museum Complex.

It was built in 1656, in the eastern side of the enclosure, near the church Sfanta Vineri, by the lady Balasa, wife of Constantin Serban. The construction is composed of four rooms (living chambers), put together on a single level, paved with bricks, covered with cross type vaults with splayed edges. According to the memorial inscription from the southern wall, the building was meant "... for the peace of the christians who fall in need..."

The first royal house. The first stone construction from the Royal Court and from the town is the one raised by Mircea cel Batran (Mircea the Old) at the end of the 15th century, close to the south of the church built afterwards by the same ruler. Only the sides of the cellar made of rolling stone, having the dimensions of 15 x 6 m, and a long proeminence on the short side have preserved under the house from the 15th century. The access to it is made from the north side. In the beginning, this construction was protected by a double fence of wooden pillars. The royal house from the 15th century. Raised in the third-fourth decade of the 15th century and following the model of the one in Arges, it was placed very close to one of the sides of the enclosure wall. Built on a rectangular surface, which measured 32 x 29 m on the outside, the house had a cellar on the entire surface, with four parallel aisles, on which rose the ground floor whith a large hall (about 6 x 12 m) - probably the ceremony hall and the hall of the royal council - placed on the eastern side - and rooms intended for the accomodation of the regnant and his family. The royal house from the 16th century. Ruins of Petru Cercel's palace In the year 1584, the waivode Petru Cercel imagined the construction of a building inspired from the composition principles of the palaces he saw during its peregrinations along Europe. The formation of the house and the decoration of the building's frontages are new elements, but we can sense the local tradition induced by the local manufacturers. The Royal Court built by Petru Cercel, "a small, but beautiful and grand palace", situated near the south side of the first royal house, but completely separated from it, was composed of cellars, the ground floor and one other floor. The cellars, preserved until now in its incipient form, were placed on the axis of the building, having a rectangular shape plane with a 12 m side, divided into four identical sections placed around a massive pillar. Ruins of Petru Cercel's palace Initially the access was made through an underground arched proeminence of 25 m long and it was placed on the west side. The ground floor sheltered the royal common room and it was constituted of 10 rooms, from which a large one was placed cross-cut at the southern extremity. The floor contained the living chambers of the waivode and his family and it was completely separated from the ground floor. The access to it was possible only from the outside through a staircase situated on the western frontage and there was a direct connection with the great Church through a passage. The houses were covered with enamelled tiles. The palace from the 17th century Matei Basarab finished in 1654 the reconstruction of the royal houses, raising a floor above the house from the 15th century and connecting it with the new one by a passage linkage, resulting a real palace, uniform from the architectonical point of view. Destroyed in 1659, the palace is restored by Constantin Brancoveanu. The vaults and the floors will be renewed and the rooms will be decorated with timber work and paintings. A loggia with access staircase from the garden was built on the east frontage of the Petru Cercel's house and also a second one towards west, on a porch made by Matei Basarab, changing also the orientation of the cellar's access on the side of the great royal church.

Acted as the dungeon of the royal court, also representing a strong defensive element. The Chindia Tower was also used as a surveillance and defence point for the court and for the city. It was provided with shooting loopholes, while the first level had an access door connected to the royal palace. In the XVI-XVII centuries it also acted as a prison. According to the archaeological researches, it was built during the first half of the XV century, probably during the reign of Vlad Dracul. Another possible founder of the tower could have been the famous Vlad Țepeș- Dracula. The architectural researches regarding the tower proved that this construction was built over the porch of the chapel constructed during the reign of Mircea cel Bătrân. „Built over the porch of the chapel church, resulted from the embedding of two semi-cylindrical arches in the western facade of the church and concluded with a third, parallel with this facade, was initially made of three levels. Over the semi-cylindrical vault of the ground floor, arranged longitudinally in relation to the church’s axis, there was, on the superior floor, a room whose walls was pierced by the four battlements with a height of 1,50 m and an exterior door oriented towards south-east, through which they made the connection from the ground level by using a mobile ladder, without existing a direct interior connection between the ground floor and the superior floor. The last room, reduced in height, having five shorter battlements, represented the surveillance, and possibly, defence balcony. Within a short period of time since the construction of this tower, with the purpose of establishing a consolidation for its elevation, the space between those three arcades was walled in”. Today, the Chindia tower does not keep its original elements, as it was reconstructed in a neogothic style in the middle of the XIX century, during the reign of Gheorghe Bibescu and of Dimitrie Știrbei. The only witness for the tower’s aspect before it was rehabilitated by the Viennese architects is now a drawing from the year 1840, made by the famous French graphician Michel Bouquet. In this drawing we can see that the pyramidal base was made of bricks.

An endowment of Petre Cercel (1583-1585), the great Royal Church was built in the year 1584, at the same time with the Royal Court and next to it. The halidom bears the titular saint "The Virgin Mary's sleep" and was carried out after the model of the inscribed greek cross type churches. The monument stands out of the halidoms built at the end of the 16th century by its until then unencountered proportions, as the rectangle in which is inscribed the external cone measuring 14 x 30 m. Petru Cercel added a balcony above the nave entrance for the royal family, with direct access from the palace through a passage which joined the two constructions. The first painting from the end of the 16th century or beginning of the 17th, partially preserved on the of the deacon's wall above the altar and on the southern wall of the pronaos was superposed on a second layer of painting made between 1696-1698 on Constantin Brancoveanu's iniative. The diversity of the iconographical themes; the colour harmonization sense as well as the expression of the faces make of this church's painting one of the great achievements of the age. The detail abundance, the great number of low proportions scenes, bound together by colouring and scale, creates a strong expression of unity which also detaches itself from almost all the painting ensembles of the Brancoveanu age. We can find in the great Royal Church the largest gallery of Muntenia rulers' faces, preserved and represented by the votive paintings of the church's pronaos, paintings of a great artistic and documentary interest. Thus the western wall of the pronaos is decorated with the portaits of the waivodes Matei Basarab, Neagoe Basarab, then Constantin Brancoveanu and Petru Cercel (in their places as founders, holding the copy of the church), followed by Mihai Viteazu (it's his first presentation with the crown on his head), Radu Serban, Constantin Carnul, Serban Cantacuzino and Radu Mihnea.

It is located near the big gate, which was used during the reign of Constantin Brancoveanu, on the south-eastern side of the Princely Court, very close to the Good Friday Church, housed by the Copper House. The Museum of Printing and Old Romanian Book houses testimonies of the civilization of the Romanian people, expressed in one of the most efficient crafts, in terms of social impact - printing.

In the first phase, the ensemble was defended towards the town at the beginning of the 15th century by a large defence entrenchment of 20 m width and 250 m long, afterwards doubled on the inside by a stone wall. In 1584, along with the new structures which tripled the surface of the complex, Petru Cercel builds an eclosure wall provided on the outside with counterforts of triangular plane. After 1640, Matei Basarab doubles it externally with another one, punctured with five entrance towers and provided with guard rooms.

It was known until the beginning of the last century under the name "The Little Royal Church". The church came into existence in the year 1517 (according to the memorial inscription in Slavonic from the southern frontage of the church, which mentions Clucer Manea Persanu and his soul mate Vladaia) and it's the only known monument in the Romanian Country's architecture dating from the middle of the 15th century and preserved in its original shape until today. The plan of the church belongs to the trifoliated type, of elongated shape. The spire is supported by four semicylindrical arches belonging to the first period of the halidom to whom he is organically connected. It shows analogies to the porch of the Chapel-Church which also sustains a bell tower.

The entrance, which is still used now, lies under the bell tower built at the end of the 16th century (1584) and then reconstructed in the age of Matei Basarab and Constantin Brancoveanu. The bell tower has the same constructional features as the inside wall of the enclosure (raised by Petru Cercel), to whom he is related organically, not only as a structure, but from its settlement point of view, compared to the frontage wall. The building of the tower was determined by the existence of the church, which didn't have the possibility of accommodating a tower bell in its own steeples.