In December 2023, my wife and I visited the Christmas market organised by the Bucharest Municipality in Constitution Square, directly in front of the immense Palace of Parliament. The setting immediately attracted me. On one side was the monumental architecture associated with Romania’s socialist past; on the other, a temporary world of lights, music, wooden stalls and families enjoying the winter evening.
Constitution Square is not an ordinary backdrop. It forms part of the vast ceremonial setting created in front of the Palace of Parliament during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule. In December, the scale designed to project state authority is temporarily occupied by stalls, children, music and informal gatherings. The change in the meaning of the space is as interesting as the decorations themselves.
The market had opened on 30 November. A brightly decorated Christmas tree, a Ferris wheel and illuminated attractions transformed the square after dark. My wife and I rode the Ferris wheel, and the amusements brought back memories of the fairs I knew as a child. It was an experience I enjoyed not only as a visitor but also as someone watching how a public space changes when people gather to celebrate.
Romanian Christmas customs extend far beyond the market stalls. In many communities, groups of carol singers — colindători — traditionally visit homes, carrying songs of blessing and good fortune. Regional winter practices also include masked performances and dances whose roots reach into older rural seasonal customs. A city market presents only one modern, festive expression of a much wider cultural calendar.
Among the small wooden huts were Christmas ornaments, traditional handicrafts, local products and places to eat. The market offered an opportunity to see seasonal customs in a contemporary urban setting. Romania’s winter celebrations bring together Christian traditions, regional crafts and the more recent visual language of the European Christmas market.
Seasonal foods are part of that continuity: cozonac, the sweet festive bread, and preparations associated with winter family gatherings are familiar elements of the Romanian holiday season. Commercial Christmas markets bring such traditions into a public setting, where they meet contemporary entertainment, tourism and urban leisure.
I returned to photograph the square on several evenings during our stay. Each time, the changing light suggested different possibilities. What interested me most was the contrast between the colourful Ferris wheel in the foreground and the dark mass of the Palace of Parliament behind it. The building seemed almost silent, while the illuminated wheel was full of movement.
Night photography made the contrast more pronounced. The illuminated wheel suggested movement and fleeting pleasure; the palace remained an immense, comparatively dark geometric mass. Neither element needed to be explained within the frame, yet together they suggested a story about how public places can acquire new meanings over time.
That photograph became my favourite from the series. For me, it brings together two very different images of Bucharest: the weight of its political history and the simple pleasure of people enjoying a winter evening. It is a contrast that I could not have arranged in a studio; it existed naturally in the city before my camera.