Queen Marie Park

Conceived by us in the summer of 2007, this project, initiated by the architect Alexandra Chiliman, aims to make local residents more familiar with the personality of Queen Mary of Romania within the grounds of a park bearing her name. Designed to look like grave stones, a series of panels depict the queen at different stages during her life. Some of the texts accompanying the photographs in the exhibition area can be read below.

MARIE (Alexandra Victoria), Queen of Romania, born 29th October 1875 in Eastwell Park, died 18th July 1938 in Sinaia, buried in Curtea de Arges.

Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, daughter of Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh (son of Queen Victoria of England), and the Duchess Marie, daughter of Alexander II of Russia. Married to Prince Ferdinand on 29th December 1892.

Endowed with many talents, courageous and energetic, compassionate and always ready to help, risking her health and even her life while doing so. She demonstrated this latter quality during the War in 1913, while visiting the cholera camps, and again in 1916-17, in Moldavian hospitals housing soldiers infected with typhoid.

"My love of this country, which I made my own through tears and sighs, has become a religion to me. I feel connected to her as if by steel chains running through my heart, brain and blood. I feel that each of the six children I have given her is a link in the chain only death and disaster can break (...) if others were to decide to leave, I with my children would remain tied to this land, for to tear us away would be to tears the hearts from our bodies." (Marie, Queen of Romania, The Story of My Life).