ABSTRACT
One could hardly imagine a setting more befitting a collective comparative study of popular histories and nationalism than the Economat hotel in Sinaia, Romania, host to the conference from which this volume evolved. The hotel’s plainness did not conceal its past glory as an auxiliary building of Peleş Castle, royal residence to the Romanian kings. The castle and the entire Royal Estate of Sinaia were the enterprises of Romania’s first monarch, the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Prince Karl, proclaimed in 1881 King Carol I. The eclecticism of the castle’s architecture and styles, of its numerous art collections and many artefacts was a statement about Romania’s status as a new nation, welding together multiple ethnicities and bridging the gap between Europe and the ‘East’. Inspired by varie-gated nineteenth-century revivals, such as the neo-Renaissance style, neomedievalism, and Saxon influences (rampant in Transylvania at the time), its interiors display flamboyant imitation Baroque, Florentine, Ottoman, and Moorish styles.
