Why this story matters: Stories like this remind us that improvement often comes through small, steady efforts.
Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to architecture, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.
The central bus station in Chisinau is a place of unexpected beauty. Spanning an entire wall at the back, beyond mundane rows of faded blue seats and worn-down ticket booths, is a monumental masterpiece of mosaic art.
Completed by the artist Mikhail Burya in 1974, the piece — known as “The City is Flourishing and Being Built” — evokes a time of great change in Moldova’s capital. Red, yellow, white and blue fragments depict a scene of workmen welding, residents busy in the streets, towering angular skyscrapers, as well as bold floral motifs.
Buretz is one of a group of Moldovans who, since 2020, have been documenting, mapping and spreading the word about the dazzling yet often little-appreciated mosaics across the country in an effort to preserve them for future generations.
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“We began to speak about certain mosaics and then we agreed to make a database,” explains Buretz, a 42-year-old popular political cartoonist who, as a young man, took part in study exchanges in Massachusetts, Michigan and Florida.
Thus was born their aptly-named project, Mosaics of Moldova. To date, the project has logged more than 500 mosaics, mostly with traditional and folkloric imagery such as laborers in the fields harvesting grapes and wheat, Moldova’s age-old staple crops. Some of the mosaics are registered thanks to submissions from the general public.
At the same time, the group has been using photogrammetry — a technology that captures precise 3D visual representations of objects using several photographs from different angles — to preserve the mosaics digitally.
Many of those handmade treasures date back decades to a period when the Soviet Union was undergoing a mosaic boom. Housing policy introduced in the 1950s by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, implemented strict limits on the designs of buildings — gone was the era of architectural extravagance under Stalin.
But one of the few ways that authorities tolerated creativity and color were mosaics.
So through the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, they sprouted up all across Moldova, a country today of about three million people bordering Ukraine and Romania.
In Chisinau, there are dozens of impressive mosaics, some made by renowned artists such as Pavel Obuh, Gavriil Vaşcenco, Mihai Burea, Aurel David and Filimon Hămuraru. The 1983 “Stone Flower” fountain — a fountain in the shape of a flower, layered in pretty red and yellow mosaics — is one highlight. As is the 1988 piece “Taming of the Fire,” whose curved mosaic flames portray the industrial growth of the city. Others depict Soviet space exploration, such as the mesmerizing “Glory to the Plowman” (1972), whose luminous moon and stars can be seen from afar.
These mosaics, made from glass or ceramics, were built to last. But over the years, with no maintenance or protection from authorities, many have been falling into disrepair, or have even been actively destroyed.
According to Buretz, one mosaic-covered bus station on the outskirts of Chisinau was destroyed by authorities and replaced by a “soulless,” modern stop. “There were no other monuments in that area, no points of interest,” he says. “It’s stupid.”
Chisinau City Hall did not respond to a request for comment.
Around the world, unique cultural heritage is being threatened by construction and development, lack of maintenance and legal protection, as well as conflict and war. UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger currently features 53 sites, from the Chan Chan Archaeological Zone in Peru to Kyiv’s Saint-Sophia Cathedral.
Others are threatened due to their complicated political histories, something that the Soviet mosaics in Moldova are implicated in, particularly in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite their relatively neutral subject matter.
“Some people are indifferent, not interested to tear things down, but for others there are negative connotations around these kinds of works,” says Ieva Astahovska, an art critic and curator at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Far from trying to erase such history, Mosaics of Moldova’s citizen-led approach, using digital documentation to ramp up visibility and public awareness, is proving effective in forcing threatened heritage onto the political agenda. Similar initiatives have been launched in other post-Soviet states like Ukraine.
Besides engaging citizens across the country and inspiring news coverage, they have begun to force institutions to take note and even change policy. In December 2023, following lobbying by Mosaics of Moldova, Chisinau City Hall agreed to classify 22 mosaic panels of “exceptional artistic and urbanistic value” and to include them on the city’s Register of Public Monuments.
Then in April and May 2024, Mosaics of Moldova held an exhibition at the National Museum of History of Moldova to highlight the aesthetic beauty of the mosaics and their cultural and historical importance — but also to underline their current state of degradation and lack of legal protection.
“These intricate works of art are not mere decorations and reflect not only the ideologies of the Soviet era, but embody a broad narrative of human creativity and aspirations,” read the notes of the exhibition, which received support from USAID.
At a national level, the Mosaics of Moldova team has been lobbying the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research to request the inclusion of mosaics in the National and Local Registers of Public Monuments. In an emailed statement, Corneliu Cirimpei, state secretary of the Ministry of Culture, said that his department is now carrying out a “comprehensive inventory” of Moldova’s mosaics in collaboration with regional authorities. “The Ministry of Culture encourages civil society’s efforts to preserve and promote our mutual goals in the field of public art and heritage,” he said.
Meanwhile, proponents argue that preservation of Moldova’s mosaics, although requiring a financial investment, could lead to an economic gain by boosting tourism to Moldova, which is one of the least visited countries in Europe.
“Soviet stuff is what brings people to Moldova,” agrees tour operator Johnson. “It could be a real boon for the tourist industry.”
The efforts are all the more vital since nowadays it is prohibitively expensive to produce similar mosaics, due to the decline of the industry and related loss of technical machinery and artisanal knowledge. Piece by piece, as politicians have come up short, Moldovans are taking it into their own hands to intervene.
Scrolling photos courtesy of Peter Yeung.
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