Ruins of the Catargiu Manor

Summary

The ruined manor of the Catargiu family at Maia, Ialomița County. It was the seat of the prime minister Barbu Catargiu, who is buried in the neighbouring church, now part of a county museum site; the manor itself was nationalised in 1950 and destroyed.

Legal status

Declared a historic monument by a decree of King Michael I (date not given in the archive file); an expropriation resolution for the former residence appears in the 1946-1948 correspondence; nationalised in 1950 according to Adevărul (2021) ↗

History

According to Adevărul, the Catargiu family held the Maia estate from 1800 and later bought the Filipescu estate, with its manor, park and church. Barbu Catargiu, the prime minister assassinated in June 1862, is buried in the village church, and Adevărul says he built a castle on the hilltop beside it. His wife founded a girls' institute at Maia. A decree of King Michael I declared the former residence a historic monument, and the archive file of the Monuments Commission for 1946-1948 records a resolution on its expropriation and an architect's report calling for urgent repairs. According to Adevărul (2021), the castle was nationalised in 1950 and ruined and destroyed in the communist period; an earlier Adevărul article (2015) says Soviet soldiers set it on fire in the Second World War. Today the church, with Barbu Catargiu's tomb, is the Maia-Catargi section of the Ialomița County Museum, opened in 1996, and the 2021 article mentions the last ruins of the manor beside it.

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