The villa was Druga’s family resort, and it was built in a Mediterranean style. It has six spacious rooms and two balconies, but artists love to use the rooftop terraces for the wonderful perspectives. Not to mention that in the summer, everybody loves to sleep on those terraces. The villa hosts artists in residence every summer and is currently in the restoration process. The castel has a special feature that makes it unique: the climbing ivy (Edera) that adorns its walls.
In Barbu Druga’s days, this old barn was used for cereal storage, as the inscription shows, it was built in 1874. The cereal storage is a long building with some refined architectural details and large wooden doors. Comprising of 4 rooms, it is now used as a generous studio for artists. It is completely painted in white and can offer more than 800 m² of exhibition space on two levels. This cereal storage is thought to become a future art gallery, also housing a permanent collection of contemporary art.
The main part of the garden is spread out in the back of the castel. It used to be a beautiful Italian-style garden, but time has transformed it into a wild English-style garden, which now possesses no less beauty and even more mystery as you walk through the narrow buxus corridors that used to be only 30 cm high and are now more than 2 m high.
The Danube is the second longest river in Europe and flows through Romania for 1,075 km. Near Cetate, the Danube forms a long beach with silky sand. It is not safe for inexperienced swimmers to swim in it, but it is a perfect place for fishing. The sights that the Danube shores offer, especially at dawn, are incredible and inspiring. Only 2 km away from the castel, artists can find the Cetate Harbour, which was also established by Barbu Druga in order to facilitate his cereal export.
The fields around the villa are absolutely amazing and definitely worth capturing in paintings and photographs, as they also provide an extraordinary context for land art works. The sun that bathes the flora in the fields somehow reminds us of the light in the Lazio region of Italy. It’s a golden light that gives the horizon a kind of magnetic attraction. The dawn should never be missed while at Cetate; it is a real treat! Not to mention that every year, by the end of August, a large flock of storks gathers without fail in the same place near the castel to prepare for their big flight back to Africa. Seeing so many of them up close is definitely a rare experience.
The Old Mill, which you can see on the left of the Cereal Storage (the main exhibition and studio space), opens the imagination of the artists to a past world. One can only imagine the procedures used for making flour or even what a day spent there used to feel like. The juxtaposition of the building with the forest and the constantly changing sky creates an inspiring landscape to be around.
