Abstract

Carol II, reigning in Romania from 1930 to 1940, used culture and arts to consolidate his power. He aimed at building the nation on the values of the rural tradition and at representing in stone the king as its only spokesman. In the capital city, monuments dedicated to Carol and his predecessors were placed in the most important squares, and modernist architecture was used to suggest a new egalitarian attitude. The attempt was hardly successful: people from the countryside continued to feel extraneous to the urban environment and a homogeneous «Carolist style» was never created.