[SkyWatch] Peles Castle II

This is my second post on the magnificent Peles Castle in Sinaia. The beautiful blue sky made the perfect backdrop for this outstanding site and so I link this post to SkyWatch Friday.

The statue in the first image is King Carol I, under whose reign the country gained its independence. He commissioned the building of this summer palace. He was Romania's longest serving monarch, and he died and was buried there in 1914.

 Sinaia, Romania, 2011

 [click on images to see wonderful details of construction]

The wife of King Carol, Queen Elisabeth, was quite a personality herself. She wrote this in her journal while the castle was being built:

Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled in all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes.

And we have the impression globalization is a recent phenomena? Migration is as old as these hills and will never stop.

I'll be sharing more photos of the interior tomorrow.