Romanian spas between then and now. A sketch of urban planning in the 1970-1980s

Especially since the 19th century, spa resorts have been a privileged laboratory of modernity, where concerns for health, leisure, urban aesthetics and technological progress have been concentrated. The majority of Western spas were organized around landscape urbanism and the image of the picturesque, whose main element was the ^natural setting1.

In Romania, the phenomenon developed spectacularly after 1880, the model of French or German spa towns being imported almost uncritically. They were created or developed against the backdrop of an ideology of accelerated modernization, through which the Romanian state, which was in the process of forming and asserting its identity, sought to catch up with the West. Particularly after ¹⁹⁰⁶², with the emergence of the big hotels and the integration of the national style, the local seaside resorts were already building a distinct identity, situated between Western cosmopolitanism and local orientali