Stephen the Great boulevard

Stephen the Great boulevard is located between Libretti Square and Dimitri Cantemir Square. It has a length of 3.8 km. It is the most critical urban highway, the central axis of Chisinau, along which the most important objectives have been located over time. The Great National Assembly Square is also crossed by Stephen the Great Boulevard. In 1812, it became a permanent centre for government business. It had the same type of urban planning done in the Russian Empire. During different periods it was called by other names. So, at the beginning of the 19th century, it was called Millionnaya Street, from the 1840s until 1877 it was called Moskovskaya Street, then Aleksandrovskaya Street (1877–1924), bd. Alexander the Kind (1924–1944). In 1931, the boulevard was divided into two: from Libertatii Square (the southern end of the street) to Armeneasca Street, it kept the name “Alexandru cel Bun,” and from Armeneasca Street to the end, where the Military Hospital was located, it’s called bd. King Carol II. Between 1944–1952 the street was named in honour of Vladimir Lenin. During the Soviet Moldovan era, parades were held in honour of the Great October Socialist Revolution, May Day, and Victory Day. It has been declared a boulevard of Stephen the Great and Saint since 1989, the same year of the adoption of the Romanian language as a state language.

Mitropolit Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni Street

Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni was a Romanian clergyman who served as Metropolitan of Moldavia, Metropolitan of Kherson and Crimea, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych, Exarch of Moldo-Wallachia, and Archbishop of Chisinau, being the first head of the church in Bessarabia after the Russian annexation. The local boyars, led by Bănulescu-Bodoni, petitioned for self-rule and the establishment of a civil government based on the Moldavian traditional laws. In 1818, a special autonomous region was created, which had Moldovan (Romanian) and Russian as languages used in the local administration. In 1813, Bănulescu-Bodoni founded a Romanian-language seminary and, in 1814, a printing press. He also oversaw the building of the Chisinau Metropolitan Church (1817) and of the Cathedral. A Romanian translation of the New Testament was published in 1817 and the whole Bible in 1819 in Petrograd. Bănulescu died in 1821 and was buried at the Căpriana Monastery. The canonization of the worthy Metropolitan Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni took place on September 3, 2016, the Diocese of Chisinau and Hotin’s founding the head of which was for several years His Eminence Metropolitan. The canonization of Tomos was read at the Căpriana Monastery, the place of eternal rest of the saint. He is commemorated in Chisinau, where a street is named after him near the Nativity Cathedral.

Maria Cebotari Street

Maria Cebotari (original name: Ciubotaru, 10 February 1910 – 9 June 1949) was a celebrated Bessarabian-born Romanian and Austrian soprano and actress, Germany’s most lavish opera and singing stars in the 1930s and 1940s. Beniamino Gigli considered Cebotari one of the greatest female voices he ever heard. Maria Callas was compared to her, and Angela Gheorghiu named Maria Cebotari among the artists she admires the most. Cebotari was born at Chisinau, in Bessarabia, and studied singing at the Chisinau Conservatory, and in 1929 joined the Moscow Art Theater Company as an actress. Soon she married the company’s leader, Count Alexander Virubov. Moving to Berlin with the company, she studied singing with Oskar Daniel for three months and made her debut as an operatic singer by singing Mimi in Puccini’s opera La Bohème at Dresden Semperoper on 15 March 1931. Bruno Walter invited her to the Salzburg Festival, where she sang Euridice in Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. From then on, she appeared at many great opera houses, including Vienna State Opera and La Scala Opera House of Milan. Besides her successful career at the opera houses, Cebotari appeared in several films related to opera—such as “Verdi’s Three Women,” “Maria Malibran,” “The Dream of Madame Butterfly.” Her funeral was “one of the most imposing demonstrations of love and honored any deceased artist has ever received” in the history of Vienna, with thousands of people attending.

31 august 1989 street

In the centre of the city, on one street or another, at a certain moment you will cross 31 August 1989. The street was built in 1818 and became one of the first streets of the "New City". Initially, the street was called Kievskaya, which, in residential buildings, sat the nobility of the city. In the second half of the 19th century, new buildings appeared: Theological Seminary, the first secondary school for boys, the high school for girls, the Church of St. Panteleimon. In 1944, with the advent of Soviet power, the street was restored to its original name and here appeared the Republican Library, the Fire theatre and the Press House. You've probably wondered why the street is called that, and what events were at the root of renaming it in honour of the last summer day of 89? On 27 August 1989, hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the country gathered in the central square of Chisinau, asking the authorities to legislate the two main national claims – the status of state language (official) for the Moldovan language (Romanian) and the transition of writing from Russian to Latin. Already on 31 August 1989, the Supreme Soviet adopted the Language Law, officialising the Romanian language as the only "state language", based on the Latin Alphabet, this being the first and most important historical conquest of the National Renaissance Movement of post-war Bessarabia! August 31st is marked in the Republic of Moldova as the day of the Romanian Language.