A FESTIVAL OF PLANETS IN AVRIG

Text Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
Photos Valentin Grigore
Design Florin Alexandru Stancu

In 2018-07-1/4
Valentin Grigore lived a veritable festival of the planets
during a Transylvania Project Association event in Avrig,
a small Romanian town in the Sibiu County.

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Conquering Transylvania in the 1690s,
the Habsburgs experimented for the first time a Saxon governor over here,
Baron Samuel von Brukenthal,
in between 1774 and 1787.

In his main palace, placed in the central square in Hermannstadt (Sibiu),
he realized an international Art Gallery and a Library,
the nucleus of the future famous Brukenthal National Museum,
which was opened for the public at large in 1817.

If his cultural legacy is very important for Romania,
the historians avoid to write about von Brukenthal’s role
(was it big, small or insignificant?)
in the terrible repression made by the imperial army
against the Romanian leaders and peasants
involved in the social-nationalist uprising
of Horia, Closca and Crisan in 1784.

Von Brukenthal also made another palace in Frek (Avrig) in 1788,
at a distance of 25 km from Sibiu,
which, after 1990, has become a seat of private or cultural events.

Valentin Grigore’s contact with Avrig’s sky was quite special:
Venus, the Moon, Mars…

At the Transylvania Project event,
a few Romanian personalities in astronomy and science
presented lectures for teachers and ambitious students.

At the same time, like I said,
Venus, Jupiter and Mars
presented unforgettable lectures of sky beauty
just because

when the planets give a fest
you have no reason to rest.