PHOTO GALLERY The Solacolu Inn, the 165-year-old building in Bucharest that has become a ruin, will be made safe with a metal and wooden exoskeleton / How the building looks today outside and inside and what is the history of the building

The Mayor of the Capital, Nicuşor Dan, announced on Monday, April 29, that the works to secure the Hanul Solacolu building, a heritage building on Calea Moșilor no. 134, built in 1859 and in decay for years, are starting. The entire 3,400 sqm building will be supported on all sides by an external skeleton that will support not only the facade but also the interior elements, heels, vaults and windows. In order to be able to work inside, a quantity of 3,000 cubic meters of waste must be evacuated from the basements and floors of the building, especially rubble dumped here over time from other construction sites.

According to Nicușor Dan, the safekeeping will last until the end of 2024, after which the consolidation and restoration of the building will follow, for which a contest of solutions is being organized.

“That’s why it’s important to do things in this order, that’s why we lost a few months to do the technical expertise, and it says what is the correct order of operations so that no accidents occur. There is a 1-2% risk of accidents, of a wall falling, but all the technical expertise is designed to minimize this risk, so it’s not just about the facade (to be saved, ed.), it’s about everything the vaults, the interior windows”, mentioned Nicușor Dan.

“We’re not just talking about a prop with some wooden structures, we’re talking about a technical project with execution details precisely to take care of everything that exists in the inn, filling the gaps with different elements”, added the executive director of the Consolidation Administration, Razvan Munteanu.

The municipality expropriated the Solacolu Inn in January 2022, and for 2 years it took the technical expertise and the preparation of the documentation to make the building safe.

“It took a while to get to this stage because we went through some fair administrative stages and technical stages, in addition to the support part we are talking here about a large amount of debris that we have to evacuate. In the last 20 years, this building has represented a kind of garbage dump of this area, many construction sites choosing to bring impressive amounts of rubble, the basements are completely occupied by rubble, so through this safekeeping we also carry out the evacuation of the rubble and practically ensure the work front for the future site of the building’s consolidation”, the head of the Municipal Administration for the Consolidation of Buildings with Seismic Risk also specified.

What the facade of the Hanul Solacolu building looks like, April 2024

What the Solacolu Inn looks like inside, April 2024

Brief history of Solacolu Inn

The Solacolu Inn is one of the oldest historic buildings-monuments of Bucharest, located near the center, on Calea Moșilor at the intersection with Paleologu Street.

The building was originally the first pasta factory in Bucharest and was built in the year of the union, 1859, by the Solacoglu brothers, merchants from Bulgaria who settled in Wallachia. According to public data, Liuben Karavelov, leader of the Bulgarian revolutionary emigration, lived in this building on the eve of the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, in which Bulgarian volunteers also participated.

According to Libertatea, the Solacolu Inn is composed of four buildings built between 1859-1890. The building was damaged by a fire during the Second World War, but even under these conditions, it was used until the late 1980s.

According to buletin.de, in the first part of the 90s, the building was under the care of the Capital City Hall, being inhabited by several families distributed by the former ICRAL (today the Real Estate Administration) or illegally occupying the space. In 1997, the inn was included in the National Restoration Plan for the rehabilitation of the historic center, but nothing has happened since then.

According to the documents of the Municipal Administration for the Consolidation of Buildings with Seismic Risk, the building was inhabited until the year 2000, when the last tenants were evicted, who during the period of use caused significant damage to the buildings and the accumulation of quantities of garbage and construction materials, such as rubble, wood, metal or sanitary objects. 14 years ago, the roof of the building collapsed, year after year the building was a real danger to passers-by and on the verge of collapsing completely.

Libertatea wrote in November 2007 that several families were found in the abandoned building who were carrying out a series of criminal activities in the building, especially prostitution.

The building is currently non-functional and in a state of major disrepair.

In November 2011, the Municipal Administration for the Consolidation of Buildings at Seismic Risk took over the administration of the historic building.

AMCCRS also notes that the building reached this situation “following the major earthquakes of the 1940s, 1977, 1986, 1990 that drastically affected the resistance structure of the building, the action of meteorological factors (weather, sudden and large differences in indoor temperature) , of corrosion, of chemical factors-animal/bird droppings”.