Chișinău from 1919 in the Travel Notes of the American John Kaba and the French Emmanuel de Martonne

Abstract

The article points out the representations that the city of Chișinău had shortly after the Union of Bessarabia with Romania in the notes written by the American John Kaba and the French Emmanuel de Martonne. Westerners visited it in 1919, and their descriptions and information were intended to inform the people of their countries on various aspects, from economic to political and cultural. Although they aimed to make a study, their representations were not always dry, involving aesthetic attitudes. We believe that some passages fix representative and synthetic images of the period, thus enriching the imagological collection of the capital of interwar Bessarabia. For example, Emmanuel de Martonne saw a Chișinău with wide streets intersecting at right angles, beautiful buildings and parks, with shops and museums. This vision proved, according to him, a modern European urban sensibility.