The Villa

The villa was Druga`s family resort and it was build in a Mediterranean style. It has six generous rooms and two balconies, but artists love to use the roof terraces for the wonderful perspectives and not to mention that in the summer everybody loves to sleep on those terraces. The villa is hosting every summer the artists in residence and is due to be restored. The villa has a special feature that makes its trademark: the climbing Edera that dresses up the walls.

The Cereal Storage

Back in Barbu Druga`s days, this old barn was used for cereal deposit and, 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. Composed of 4 rooms, now it is used as a generous studio for artists. It is completely painted in white and can offer more than 800 m² exhibition space on two levels. This cereal storage is thought to be a future art gallery, holding also a permanent collection of contemporary art.

The Garden

The main part of the garden is spread in the back of the villa. It used to be a beautiful Italian style garden but time has transformed it in a wild English style garden which now has no less beauty and even more mystery as you walk through the narrow buxus corridors that use to be only 30 cm high and now are more that 2 m high.

The Danube

The Danube is the second longest river in Europe and flows through Romania for 1.075 km. Near to Cetate the Danube forms a long beach with silky sand. It is not safe for unexperimented swimmers to swim in it but 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 villa artists can find de Cetate Harbour which was also established by Barbu Druga in order to facilitate his cereal export.

Landscapes

The fields around the villa are absolutely amazing and definitely worth captured in paintings and photographs, being also an extraordinary context for land art works. The sun that fills the flora on the fields reminds us somehow of the light of Lazio region of Italy. It’s a golden light that gives the horizon some kind of magnetic attraction. The dawn shouldn’t be ever missed while at Cetate, is a real treat! Not to mention that every year by the end of August, a big flock of storks gather with no mistake at the same place of the villa, to prepare for the big flight back to Africa. Seeing so many in such a close up is definitely a rare experience.

The Old Mill

The Old Mill that you can see in the left of 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 how a day spent there used to feel like. The juxtaposing of the building with the forest and the constantly changing sky render into an inspiring landscape to be around.