The Cismigiu Garden uttered as a password by generations, is the oasis most at hand, the place one passes when going to the office or going shopping, a romantic place for lovers and last but not least a place where old people have nice chats in the sun and children play happily. There is a lake with boats on it and a restaurant with an open-air terrace on one of its banks. Its secular trees, vigorous generals of the forests, are worth saluting. The statues within have their own story: Rotonda, for instance - conceived exactly half a century ago - guards the busts of 16 great Romanian writers and has for years been a meeting place for chess fans. There is also a remarkable monument raised in 1920 in honor of the French soldiers who fell in Romania during World War 1. A teacher and a poet, known by the name of Maica Smara, has a bust here as a homage to her fight for women's rights. Naturally, as in all parks, one can hear the enchanting songs of the birds and see the flocks of pigeons.

The experienced aesthete's eye won't miss the refinement of a garden like Cismigiu, designed according to the golden rules of landscape art. Here one can find a mixture of geometry and the picturesque which give perfect harmony to the vegetal rhythms in all the four seasons. The history of the Cismigiu Garden itself is a picturesque page from the chronicle of Bucharest. In 1670 this part of the town was a swamp, a large place suitable for a vineyard and a garden. The owner was someone who also owned the lake of Dura the merchant. Full of fish, surrounded by reeds and sought after by wild geese, the lake, that was later to become the water mirror of Cismigiu, was bequeathed in 1845 together with the whole land of the famous Dura to the townhall.

It was then that the sanitation and landscaping began and the plants and trees were planted under the careful supervision of a German gardener, Mayer. In 1850 the works became more extensive: The main path and some lateral ones were built, an artesian well was sunk in the middle of the lake, a wooden pavilion was built for the brass band and various species of flowers and trees were acclimatized.

In 1852, when he died, Mayer left behind a beautiful garden called Cismigiu. In 1910, the manager of this public garden, Rebhun, was a talented landscape architect. He reorganized the Cismigiu Garden making it what it is today: The main path is a passage through a carpet of flowers, watched over by lime-trees rather than by poplars.

Once, people used to skate on its frozen lake and rode their bicycles for the first time on its paths. There were photographers ready to take photos within a minute and street organs with parrots which pulled little notes out of a box foretelling one's fate. They say there is in the Cismigiu Garden the cleanest water in Bucharest, the spring being named after Eminescu, the Romanian national poet. They also say that on some mysterious nights one can hear the sound of the bells from the lost Sarindar church which once stood in the neighborhood. Optimistic and patient, struggling with their daily difficulties, the inhabitants of Bucharest look forward to hearing the brass band playing again in their old Cismigiu Garden.