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Colentina is a neighborhood in
Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
's
Sector 2 Sector 2 ( ro, Sectorul 2) is an administrative unit of Bucharest. Demographics Sector 2 is the city's most multicultural sector. In particular, it contains Romania's largest community of Chinese people, who mainly live in the districts of C ...
. It is located on the north-east of the city and is named after the nearby
Colentina River The Colentina is a left tributary of the river Dâmbovița in Romania. It discharges into the Dâmbovița near Bălăceanca.
.


Name

A local
folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
says that the name is derived from "colea-n-tină" (''there, in the mud''), this being the answer given by a ''spătar'' to
Matei Basarab Matei Basarab (; 1588, Brâncoveni, Olt – 9 April 1654, Bucharest) was a Wallachian Voivode (Prince) between 1632 and 1654. Reign Much of Matei's reign was spent fighting off incursions from Moldavia, which he successfully accomplished in 1637 ...
, who asked the former where he had defeated the Ottoman army.


History


Early history

Until the second half of the 18th century, the area of today's Colentina was forested, as it was on the map of
Stolnic ''Stolnic'' was a ''boier'' (Romanian nobility) rank and the position at the court in the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The title approximately corresponds to seneschal and is borrowed from the Slavic title ''stolnik'' (from th ...
Constantin Cantacuzino.Ghinea, p.243 Nevertheless, archeologists found traces of small settlements in Colentina, dated from the 6th-7th century; in one of such settlements, archeologists found a Justinian-era Byzantine bronze coin dated 539.Giurescu, p.39


Monastery estate

The village of Colentina located near the
Plumbuita Monastery The Plumbuita Monastery ( ro, Mănăstirea Plumbuita) is a Romanian Orthodox monastery located at 58 Plumbuita Street in Bucharest, Romania. Its church is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. History One narrative holds that the monastery was fou ...
was first mentioned on the map of H. C. Schütz of 1780 and on I. F. Schmidt's 1788 map. An Austrian map of 1791 shows the village as being located at the crossroad of the routes leading to Fundeni, Afumați, Ștefănești, and
Pipera Pipera village is a neighborhood in Voluntari, Ilfov County, at the northern edge of the city of Bucharest, Romania. Development Until 1995, Pipera was an ordinary village. After that, an "El Dorado" of land transactions began. Plots of land th ...
, with the high road bound for
Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
. The earliest houses were built at the crossroad and around the Cârstienești Bridge across the Colentina river, close to the gate of the monastery. Soon after, the Plumbuita Monastery, which owned the land in Colentina built and rented ('' embatic'') grocer's shops, pubs, inns, as well as agricultural land.Ghinea, p.244 In the early 19th century, among the renters was the
Paharnic The ''Paharnic'' (plural: ''Paharnici''; also known as ''Păharnic'', ''Paharnec'', or ''Păharnec''; Moldavian dialect: ''ceașnic'', el, παχαρνίκοσ, ''pakharnikos'', russian: пахарник, ''paharnik'') was a historical Romanian ...
Andronache Teohari, whose name was given to the Andronache estate in Northern Colentina, the name being still in use today. The houses were built especially along the road towards Bucharest, while the houses on the island of the monastery were still spread out. Due to this, in 1837, the ''ocârmuitor'' of
Ilfov County Ilfov () is the county that surrounds Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It used to be largely rural, but, after the fall of Communism, many of the county's villages and communes developed into high-income commuter towns, which act like suburbs ...
asked the ''
hegumen Hegumen, hegumenos, or igumen ( el, ἡγούμενος, trans. ), is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, similar to the title of abbot. The head of a convent of nuns is called a hegumenia ...
'' of the monastery to donate plots for the peasants on the domains to build their houses according to a plan. The people who settled in Colentina were a heterogenous mix: some were Romanians from across Wallachia, others were Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs. During the 1821 revolts that preceded the
Greek War of Independence The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. The Greeks were later assisted by ...
,
Alexander Ypsilantis Alexandros Ypsilantis ( el, Αλέξανδρος Υψηλάντης, Aléxandros Ypsilántis, ; ro, Alexandru Ipsilanti; russian: Александр Константинович Ипсиланти, Aleksandr Konstantinovich Ipsilanti; 12 Dece ...
and the
Filiki Eteria Filiki Eteria or Society of Friends ( el, Φιλικὴ Ἑταιρεία ''or'' ) was a secret organization founded in 1814 in Odessa, whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman rule of Greece and establish an independent Greek ...
, coming from Moldavia settled on the field on the Bucharest-ward bank of Colentina.Ghinea, p.245 The same place was used for the consecration of the flags of the first national militia in 1830 and the place where the first soldiers of the National Army took their oath of allegiance in 1834. After this, for a long time, the same field was used for
military exercise A military exercise or war game is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat. This also serves the purpose of ensuring the com ...
s.


Commune of Colentina-Fundeni

The 1863 law on the
secularization of monastery estates in Romania The law on the secularization of monastic estates in Romania was proposed in December 1863 by ''Domnitor'' Alexandru Ioan Cuza and approved by the Parliament of Romania. By its terms, the Romanian United Principalities (as the state was then know ...
made the Colentina estate property of the state and in March 1864, the rural commune of Colentina-Fundeni was created, which had three component villages: Plumbuita, Colentina and Fundeni. It was around this time that a primary school was built in the city. Toward the end of the 19th century, Colentina continued to keep its agricultural economy, much of the land being owned by the large landowners, while the inhabitants owned only a sixth of the agricultural land. The commune had six
abattoir A slaughterhouse, also called abattoir (), is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility. Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is no ...
s, three in Colentina and three in Plumbuita, killing around 12000 cows each year, the meat being then sold in Bucharest and to the 26 pubs and 5 inns that Colentina had at the time.Ghinea, p.246 In the 1890s, the village of Colentina had a population of 254, the village of Plumbuita 288 and the village of Fundeni 279. The
1899 Romanian Census This article presents the demographic history of Romania through census results. See Demographics of Romania for a more detailed overview of the country's present-day demographics. The 1930 census was the only one to cover Greater Romania. Censuse ...
shows that three more villages were created in the commune: Andronache and Boldu, on the northern part of the former Plumbuita estate, while the Tei village was created around the Ghica Palace, the commune having a population of 1048, of which 46 foreign citizens, most of which
Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
n refugees.


Bucharest neighbourhood

In 1939, Colentina, together with Pipera, Tei, Plumbuita, Andronache, and Fundeni were made part of Bucharest. The neighborhood suffered a lot of modifications in the mid 1970s and 1980s when houses were replaced with 8 to 10 storey apartment blocks, like in Tei,
Obor Obor is the name of a square and the surrounding district of Bucharest, the capital of Romania. There is also a Bucharest Metro station (on the M1 line) named Obor, which lies in this area. The district is near the Colentina and Moșilor ...
, and Calea Moșilor and has been recently the home of Arab and Chinese immigrants to Romania.


Notes


References

* Nicolae Ghinea, "Așezări sătești din sec. XV-XIX pe teritoriul orașului București", in ''București – Materiale de istorie și muzeografie'', VII, 1969. * Constantin C. Firescul vieții sale,Giurescu, p.38 ''Istoria Bucureștilor. Din cele mai vechi timpuri pînă în zilele noastre'', Bucharest, 1966


External links

{{coord, 44, 28, N, 26, 09, E, region:RO_type:city_source:GNS-enwiki, display=title Districts of Bucharest Place names of Slavic origin in Romania