**1. Introduction**

The preoccupation to protect and conserve historical monuments, as vestiges of the past and also as identitarian symbols of the Romanian people, appeared as early on as the nineteenth century in the Old Kingdom and then in Greater Romania, after 1918. The desire to preserve and to restore "in situ" or to open museums urged the authorities to create a commission as early on as 1859 that had the task of studying monuments. On 17 November 1892, by Royal Decree, Romania's very first Law on the Preservation and Restoration of Public Monuments was passed.

The Historical Monuments Commission was created under on that law [1]. The Commission was formed of five members and one secretary, all of whom were personalities well known for their contributions to humanities, exact sciences, legal sciences, and members of the Romanian Academy; the Commission was chaired by a president. The main task of the Commission was to take stock of all old buildings and objects in the country that were historically or artistically interesting and for whose preservation action had to be taken. The inventory had to be updated every 5 years, when a decision was made to qualify and disqualify the monuments. The monuments registered in this inventory could not be demolished or altered in any way without a preliminary clearance from the Historical Monuments Commission, which reported to *Casa Bisericii*, a department of the Ministry of Cults and Public Instruction.

plans, discussion reports, and decisions, all of which refer to restoration problems, conservation projects, and plans to make the most of the historical monuments. All

Out of the total 3885 folders, the name of Virgiliu Drăghiceanu will be found in 255. His contribution to the Bulletin was also outstanding: about 100 headlines over 1909–1934. In the upcoming sections, we will be reviewing his biography and his contributions as archaeologist, historian, secretary-director, Commission member, as well as a museographer, conservationist, and head of the Commission's Collections, who was deeply involved in saving, conserving, restoring, and protecting movable and immovable heritage and in making the most of it in articles, collec-

He was born in May 1879 in Râmnicu Vâlcea to a family of petty boyards who had come from Oltenia, with some roots in the former county of Romanați; he spent his childhood years in Târgoviște, where the Drăghiceanu family had settled in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His entire childhood but also his later life would be much influenced by his paternal grandfather and uncle. His grandfather, Mihalache Drăghiceanu, a baker, had contributed to the opening of a national school in Romanați and Dâmbovița Counties, and his uncle, Matei Drăghiceanu, had been a scientific personality (a mining engineer and geologist, graduate of the *École des Mines de Paris*, Romania's first mining engineer, the cartographer of Romania's first geological map, member of the Romanian Academy) [3]. Family members from his mother's side were also well known to the locals as petty boyards who had owned the land from the times of Constantin Brâncoveanu and had created

Drăghiceanu took his pre-academic courses in Târgoviște and obtained a degree in letters and philosophy from the University of Bucharest. Drăghiceanu's career path and evolution were strongly influenced by his childhood town, by how close his home was, and by the proximity of the Royal Court of Târgoviște. His first work as a historian (1907–1910) was to take stock of the monuments in Dâmbovița County and to create a county history museum, whose employees would have also been tasked with operations aimed at "stopping the ruin, devastation, and heavyhanded restorations" [4]. Starting from that moment on, he would dedicate the next 40 years of his life to saving, safekeeping, and passing on Romania's national heritage. His years of hard work; his field research; his results; his patience, tenacity, and problem-solving capacities; his team spirit; his skilled rhethoric; his position as a lecturer; his attitude as one of Bucharest's few monument protectors during the occupation; and the trust assigned to him by the Commission were the many reasons that recommended him for the position of corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1926, further to the proposal of the Nicolae Iorga, the great historian who chaired the commission over 1923–1940. He returned to Târgoviște in 1940 and continued to work on his research and studies. He died in 1964 and was

His nationwide studies and research, performed while working on Commission

assignments, and his archaeological excavations, performed on behalf of the

of these documents are of a remarkable rigour, concision, and reliability.

*Research on Works of Historian Virgil Drăghiceanu Discovered in the Archives of…*

tions, and exhibitions, as suggested by the archived documents.

**2. Virgiliu Drăghiceanu: the man**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90671*

and supported a number of religious settlements.

buried in the Central Cemetery of Târgoviște.

**161**

**3. Virgiliu Drăghiceanu and historical monuments**

The laws passed to preserve and restore historical monuments in 1913 and 1919 would enable existing institutions to take up more responsibilities, and new institutions could appear in order to support and widen the concerns of the Commission, to increase its scope of activity and to assign some of its responsibilities to the regional sections. As soon as architecture, engineering, archaeology, history, philology, sciences, and law personalities came on board as members and presidents, the Commission became stronger and more widely recognized; therefore, during Nicolae Iorga's term (1923–1940), the institution was able to handle multiple activities: clearance, protection, restoration, works, and publications. The Commission's task was to recommend Romanian fellows for studies to be pursued in Italy and Greece; they would become trained specialists in the field of conservation and restoration of Byzantine paintings.

Under these circumstances, considering the professionalism of the people who made major contributions to the outstanding efforts made to save, restore, and conserve the vestiges of the past, the case of Virgiliu Drăghiceanu stands out as a remarkable case. His permanent dedication, his passion, his love of old documents, his thorough documentation and fieldwork performance turned him into an outstanding and highly appreciated personality. He paid all the due respects to the past and to historical monuments, and he also participated in the discovery, research, classification, conservation, and restoration of the heritage passed on by the ancestors. As a team player and an all-season traveller of tracks and back roads all across Romania, he always did his best to identify solutions to save all of the monuments he studied. He remained in Bucharest during the war and made every effort to diminish the systematic plundering and destruction of the cultural heritage that had not been evacuated. He considered that only by publishing the outcome of efforts like his own (books, magazines, yearbooks, lectures, museums, roving exhibitions) could he bring the past to the public at large, pass it over to the next generations, and protect it against vandalism and ill intent: "our past, therefore, is no confabulation or a mere random word. Or some anecdote one could recount to the audience of banquets or conventions hunting for acclaim. The past exists, you will see it in the monuments and churches and stones and crosses that are everywhere and that we need to honour, because we'll thusly honour our kind and our nation's forefathers" [2].

This chapter will take you on a journey following the career path which Virgiliu Drăghiceanu took to protect historical monuments; his efforts were very closely connected to the Historical Monuments Commission, as suggested by our research of the Commission's 1907–1940 archives and 1908–1940 Bulletins (the Bulletin was suspended between 1917 and 1922) which are now being stored at the National Heritage Institute in Bucharest. The archive is formed of 3885 folders, which is a huge repository of historic information, history studies, bills of quantities, layout

*Research on Works of Historian Virgil Drăghiceanu Discovered in the Archives of… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90671*

plans, discussion reports, and decisions, all of which refer to restoration problems, conservation projects, and plans to make the most of the historical monuments. All of these documents are of a remarkable rigour, concision, and reliability.

Out of the total 3885 folders, the name of Virgiliu Drăghiceanu will be found in 255. His contribution to the Bulletin was also outstanding: about 100 headlines over 1909–1934. In the upcoming sections, we will be reviewing his biography and his contributions as archaeologist, historian, secretary-director, Commission member, as well as a museographer, conservationist, and head of the Commission's Collections, who was deeply involved in saving, conserving, restoring, and protecting movable and immovable heritage and in making the most of it in articles, collections, and exhibitions, as suggested by the archived documents.
