National History Museum of Moldova

One of Chișinău's most important pre-Soviet civic buildings, the National Museum of History of Moldova occupies the historic premises of Boys' Gymnasium No. 1. In 1888 the gymnasium director V. Soloviev secured the necessary funds and the main facade was built to the design of architect H. Lonskoy, with the wings designed by a separate architect. In 1889–1890 architects K. Gasquet and V. Țâganco oversaw a reconstruction of the building. The result is a three-storey eclectic composition in cream stone, its central section organised as a colonnaded loggia of paired pilasters supporting a balustrade, with a stepped pyramidal tower above carrying a roundel and flagpole, conveying imperial Russian public architecture in Bessarabia. After 1945 the building housed a border guards detachment, and between 1963 and 1977 the Technical University. The 1977 earthquake caused significant damage, and a reconstruction programme followed between 1980 and 1987. The museum was formally established on 21 December 1983 by Ministry of Culture Order No. 561, on the basis of the Republican Museum of Military Glory and the historical collections of the State Museum of the History and Study of the Homeland of the MSSR. In front of the building stands a cast of the Capitoline Wolf (Romulus and Remus nursing beneath the she-wolf) a replica of the bronze in Rome, an assertion of Moldovan Latinity and continuity with the Roman-Dacian heritage that the museum inside documents.