The tour guide of the free walking tour that I attended earlier recommended Museul de Banca Națională a României for a visit, so I applied for a tour online. The confirmation came via email with the offer of two alternative time slots, so going there requires a little planning ahead. When I arrived, a large group of people were already waiting outside the bank. We had to show our passports and go through security like at the airport.
The group was divided into a Romanian tour and an English tour. The English group was much smaller, so that was nice. The tour guide was knowledgable and annoyingly coy about certain information. A few times, his response to a question was, “that is not for me to say”, or “I cannot tell you,” for anything that wasn’t directly related to the museum (for example when asked about quantitative easing or the Romanian gold reserve etc). If he’d had more charisma, he could have become a politician.
The tour started in the entrance hall, where we learned that the building was built in the French western style, and progressed into a hall with several arches and columns. Each of the arches represented a teller’s desk when the building was still used as a bank, and behind each column is a safe. We were allowed to play with the door of one of them—it wasn’t as heavy to move the door as I thought, but you needed two keys to lock or unlock it. The hall itself was impressive, showing off the power of the bank. You can find the caduceus (a staff with two serpents), which is the symbol of trade and commerce (the staff with only one serpent, the Rod of Asclepius, is the apothecary symbol of healing and medicine), in the column heads and floor mosaics. The eagles in each corner symbolize power.
We were shown innumerable coins from all timeframes and European areas, starting with Roman times—I’m sure the collection of coins they have on display is worth a pretty penny. Our guide told us about the history of money and several coins… if one was a coin collector, this would be paradise; for me, it was a little boring. I found it more interesting to hear about the Romanian leu, for example that in 2005, the Romanians brought new bills (plastic) into circulation and at the same time slashed a few zero’s to make it a little easier to handle (one million lei were cut to 100 lei).
There was a large walk-in safe with a gold exhibition, and we saw a display with a pile of gold coins surrounded by several gold bars of different sizes. The walls and ceiling of the safe depicted a world map with gold resources in the ground highlighted in a golden yellow; Romania appears to be the only European country with gold resources. There was also a display that showed gold ore as it is mined. After we left the room, I watched a lady close the steel door to the safe and lock it.
After this, we were shown a 13kg gold bar in one of the smaller safes in the columns of the big hall. There was safety glass in front of it with a hole cut out that allowed us to reach in and touch the gold bar and even try to lift it. I wasn’t able to lift it with only one hand (it was also an awkward angle, in my defense).
The last display of the tour was of Romanian orders, of which the Order of the Star of Romania is still in use today. Given that this museum visit and tour is completely free, I would recommend it. It is interesting, and the building alone is worth the visit.
Very nice and old. Who knows maybe he was a politician before. “It is not for him to say” 🙂
C