Bucharest

Bucharest's Romanian Athenaeum is a concert hall whose domed, circular form has become a prominent feature of the capital's cultural landscape. Designed by the French architect Albert Galleron and inaugurated in 1888, it developed from the ambitions of a cultural society established in 1865. Public subscriptions contributed to its construction. The neoclassical building contains a concert auditorium decorated with a large fresco by Costin Petrescu depicting episodes from Romanian history. As the home of the George Enescu Philharmonic and a venue for the George Enescu Festival, the Athenaeum connects the city's nineteenth-century cultural institutions with its continuing concert life.