Kiev street

Before World War II, it was a suburb of the city with narrow streets and low-rise houses. It was only at the end of the 19th century that it was bought by the city and included in the city limits. Kiev Street runs from Tudor Vladimirescu Street (former Kalinina Street) to Aleku Russo Square (former Gheorghe Dimitrov Square). It is located in the Riscani sector and is only 0.5 km long.
In 1944, in connection with the creation of the Chisinau aviation detachment, the first airfield was created here. Its runway was located on the site of the present-day Kievskaya Street and Moskovsky Avenue.

In the 60s the construction of a new airport was started, and the territory of the old one began to be built up. The building of the airport has been preserved (Dimitrova Street, 5). It is repaired, somewhat remodeled, and painted in yellow color. In the last Soviet years it was the accounting office of the October District Komsomol Committee. It even stands not parallel to Kievskaya Street, but at an angle, apparently repeating the geometry of the airfield. And the runway was located exactly along a part of the modern Kievskaya Street.

The street was originally named in honor of G. M. Dimitrov, a figure of the Bulgarian and international communist movement.

The street is a continuation of Moskovsky Avenue. It began to be built up in the 1960s with 4 and 5-storey residential buildings. When organizing the adjacent areas, the principles of free planning with the creation of large green spaces were used.

Residential buildings are mostly facing the street, decorated with loggias (“storeys”) and stores and cafes built into the 1st floor.

At the southern end of the street its perspective is closed by a public garden.

In its northern part the street as if merges into the space of Aleku Russo – Georgi Dimitrov Square (until 1981 Reunification Square, then G. Dimitrov Square). It is located at the intersection of Maskouski Avenue and Kievska, Bogdan Voevod and Aleku Russo Streets. By architectural and planning organization it belongs to the type of open squares.

The construction of the square began in the fall of 1959. At first only 5-storey buildings were erected here. After the completion of the construction of a group of 11-storey residential buildings “Yuzhenergo-Remont” and 9-storey frame-panel residential building, the composition of the square was mainly determined.

In the early 1990s, the street was named Kievskaya.

Petru Movilă street

Metropolitan Petru Movilă Street.

It is located in the central area of the city, between Alexei Sciusev and Columna Streets, with a length of about 1 km. It bears the name of Metropolitan Petru Movilă (1565-1646), a notorious personality in the cultural history of Moldavia, Ukraine and Russia, founder of schools and reformer of the Orthodox religion, author and publisher of books: Moghiliovskaia (until 1918), Paul Dicescu (1918-1924), Petru Movilă (1924-1944), Berzarin (1944-1990).
The street dates from the first decades of the last century. The earliest buildings were basically single-storey residential houses. Later important buildings were built: the Commercial Gymnasium, today’s School No. 2, the Tax Department, today’s one of the study blocks of the Technical University, etc. At the upper end of the street, there was originally a vacant lot, which was later redeveloped into a square – the Nemțească Square, where after the war a sports complex was built, later transformed into the “Dinamo” Stadium. In the 60s and 70s of the last century, modern multi-storey buildings were erected on this street: the House of Writers, the House of Publishers, the Polygraphic Combine, the “Știința” Printing House, the “Bucuria” Shop, etc.

Grigore Vieru Boulevard

Grigore Vieru Boulevard (until 2010 it was part of bd. Renașterii, in the years 1950-1959 Țentralnîi Luci Street) is located in Râșcani sector, Chisinau. It is a main urban thoroughfare with a length of about 1.5 km, starting from Cosmonautilor Street and ending at the intersection with Albișoara Street.
Between the two lanes of the boulevard there is a narrow green space, consisting of an alley with benches and trees on the edges, which runs the length of the boulevard. The mini park is fragmented into two intersection sites. On the perimeter of the boulevard are built social and public buildings, 4-storey apartment blocks with shops on the ground floor, including:
National Bank of Moldova (no. 7, 1973, arch. B. Vaisbein);
Turist hotel complex (no. 13, 1971, architect R. Bekesevich);
Theoretical high school and student dormitories of the Agrarian University (no. 6/2, 1950s)
At the intersection with Albișoara Street, 10-12-storey dormitories were built, which complete the composition of the boulevard crossing towards the Bâc estuary.

Bulgarian Street

One of the oldest streets of the “upper” city, Bulgarian Street, still preserves the patriarchal peace and provincial coziness of old Chisinau. The historical buildings have been partially preserved only on the upper part of the street.
Bulgarian Street was named in 1834 in honor of Bulgarians who fled from the Ottoman yoke from across the Danube to Bessarabia and settled in Kishinev. The Bulgarians settled in Kishinev compactly, and already in 1790s it became necessary to connect the houses of Kishinev Bulgarians with the street, which starts from A. Mateevich Street (former Sadovaya Street). In the past centuries this part of the city was called Galbinskaya side (Yellow). To the left and right there are still residential houses of the early twentieth century.
Not far away is the old St. George Church. It was built in 1830 on the funds of the Bulgarian community. The construction of the church combines different architectural solutions, characteristic, on the one hand, for classicism, and on the other hand – for Moldovan folk architecture. The church was named in honor of the fearless Bulgarian priest George. Back in 1814, he began to collect materials and funds for the construction of this temple. For the missing funds he dared, accompanied by a member of the community to go to fellow believers-Bulgarians in Turkey. Already returning home with a large sum of money, the pilgrims came across Muslims. Father George was subjected to terrible torture. His companion managed to bring the collected donations to Kishinev. He told everyone about the martyrdom of the bishop.

Eugen Doga Pedestrian Street

Armenian streets

The Armenian community has left a serious mark on the history and geography of Chisinau. In fact, the Armenian community feels honored that there is a street here that marks their identity and claims that the Armenian Apostolic Church “Holy Mother of God” in Chisinau, together with the Armenian street, is the place where all Armenians belonging to this area and who left their homes are reunited.  And some curious moments will be described below:

1. Historical sources speak about the existence of two Armenian streets. The first one (unofficial) was on the right side of the Bîc river (the old part of the town). The second, which was established in the new part of the city in 1835, when the new urban plan of Chisinau was being finalised, can still be easily found today on the street map of the capital of the Republic of Moldova.

2. On 4 January 1817, describing the city of Chisinau, the English traveller William Mac-Michael wrote: “Among the strange crowd you could distinguish here (…) many Armenians, so numerous that they occupied a whole street. In the midst of the crowd (…) the carriage of an elegant and beautiful child, the daughter of the Armenian vicar, drove slowly along the narrow and sinful street (…) Such was the state of things … in the lower quarter of the bazaar (…)”.

3. The lack of official street names in the old part of the city was due to the fact that most of them were inhabited by ethnic groups, being named after their inhabitants, and looked more like ethnic neighbourhoods. Ștefan Ciobanu’s claim that Armenians in the early 20th century were “ethnic groups” is not true. The Armenians lived on their street in the early 19th century – leads us to conclude that this could only be the street “covered in dust in summer, mud in spring and autumn, and darkness at night”, on which the Armenian Church “St. Mother of God” was built, which was also called the Old Church.

4. The name ‘Old’ was later extended both to the church and to the street, which made the difference between the Armenian street in the old and the new part of the town, one longitudinal and the other transversal.

5. The beginning of the second Armenian street is linked to the transfer to Chisinau, after 1812, of the Armenian Archdiocese, established in 1809, by an ucaz of Tsar Alexander I, on the territory of the Principalities of Moldavia and Muntenia.

6. In 1813, for the Armenian Episcopal House in Chișinău, but also for the construction of parish houses, the governor of Basarabia assigned to the Armenian Archdiocese a territory with an area of about 25 thousand desetine of land (about 27 ha – n.n.), later included between the current streets bd. Stephen the Great and Holy, 31 August 1989, Tighina and Armenian Streets. The area of land made available constituted the “neighbourhood” occupied by the Armenian Archbishop Grigor Zakarian (1809-1828) in Chisinau. It was also called the Armenian Metropolitanate, and the archbishop had the status of metropolitan. According to the location project, the area of land given to the Archbishopric was called “Armenian courtyard” and was enclosed by a fence as the Russian denominations – Aрмянское подворье and Aрмянская ограда – tell us. The territory of the Archdiocese belonged to the monastery of Echmiadzin, the location of the Supreme Patriarch and All Armenian Catholic. The Bishop’s house inside the courtyard was located somewhere in the middle, now Bulgarian Street.

7. In 1813, the first project of the city began to be drawn up, entrusted by the civil governor of Basarabia, Scarlat Sturza, to the governmental architect Mihail Ozmidov. The works for the formation of Chișinău as the capital of the province of Basarabia lasted until August 9, 1834, when the final plan of the city, with an orthogonal street layout, different from the local tradition, was approved by Nicholas I. The streets were named in 1818, when A. N. Bahmetiev, the military governor of Podolia, made a sketch of the city with the location of the streets up to the present M. Kogalniceanu Street. The name was given to the Armenian street in the “upper part” of the town, which was named after the immediate location of the Armenian Archdiocese. Near it, in 1825, the New Square (today Central) was opened, with movable and quite beautiful commercial spaces for that period. It was here that all merchants in Chisinau were obliged to sell their goods, and they were forbidden to trade near their houses in the old part of the city. Attached to the position of their own shops, 2000 Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek and Jewish owners expressed their dissatisfaction in a letter of 18 July 1826 to the civil governor of Bessarabia, V. F. Tishkovsky. However, things did not change, and the old market gradually lost its significance, as did the “lower part” of the town.

8. In 1902, portions of the new and old Armenian Street were paved with granite brought from Podolia between 1888 and 1889. After the construction of the aqueduct by the engineer Haris on 15 December 1892, the Armenian street in the “upper part” of the town was supplied with water from the springs of the Great Fountain and the Artesian. Residents of the street who used the water had to pay for it. For example, those who drank up to 300 buckets of water a day were charged 25 kopecks, and those who drank more than 1,000 buckets a day only 12 kopecks. If the water was used for watering animals, only 1 kopeck per day was charged.

9. A report of 29 December 1921 stated that the ‘foul-smelling’ dirt ‘reaches below all limits’. Stefan Ciobanu himself, by stating that “the most beautiful part of the city starts from Armenească Street”, seems to draw a line in this direction, showing us the existence of two worlds.

10. On 29 February 1924, all the streets of Chisinau were renamed. The “upper” Armenian street was named the White Fortress, later in honour of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, and the “lower” one – Gh. Asachi. However, by inertia, both the population and the Romanian administration referred to them as Armenească and Veche Armenească. After June 28, 1940, the Soviet authorities restored the names of the streets existing until 1924. On 12 April 1941, when the city of Chisinau was divided into three urban districts: Stalinski, Krasnoarmeiski and Leninski, Armenian Street was part of the last one. That was also when the plan to rebuild Chisinau in Soviet style began to be implemented. As far as Armenian Street is concerned, after the decision of 7 December 1949, taken by the Soviet authorities regarding the nationalisation of building No. 47, i.e. the Armenian Diocesan House, there was nothing in this perimeter that reminded of the Armenian element once perpetuated in this territory. Today, with a length of 1.8 km, the Armenian street in Chisinau is one of the symbols that ‘tell’ not only the relationship between time and history, but also the history of the development of a socio-identity space in which the Armenian community was inscribed.

(From the work of Lidia PRISAC, PhD in history and
Ion Valer XENOFONTOV, PhD in History)