The main data related to the history of the Coposu House - famous for the personalities who built it and lived there - come from historian Dan Badarau, a researcher in Iasi's history. Therefore, here it is the most authoritarian source on the subject.
'In 1834 aga (the police prefect) Kogalniceanu used to possess a vineyard on this place, right in the middle of the old vineyards of Iasi, mentioned by chronicles, as wars were waged many times here.'
Mihail Kogalniceanu had a large house in town which still exists today; but he gave way to his fantasy and built for himself a villa in the middle of the vineyard, close to Iasi's gates. He helps raised the tower from which the entire Moldavia can be seen, from the Prut Valley down to Ceahlau mountains.
In 1856 the villa was already several years old. Struck by one of those financial difficulties so typical of him the former princely official had rented it.
When Mihail Sadoveanu got it in 1919, together with his brother Vasile, the villa had the original interior a little changed. Mihail Kogalniceanu had sold it to the Austrian millionaire banker and baron Neuschotz, who embellished it with starry parquets, windows and doors brought from Vienna. The latter were decorated with baron crowns; but Sadoveanu removed the adornments altogether. Neuschotz also endowed the building with a Roman nobleman bath with pottery and a pool .
It happened that Mihail Sadoveanu stepped in the new Copou house in 1919 in a moment when George Enescu was about to have a dear residence where he had composed and played for three years, when he had temporarily settled in Iasi after world war one. Thus, for several months, both Euterpe and Erato presided over the same house. But in the end Mihail Sadoveanu's muse remained to dwell alone and for two decades she lived undisturbed in the place inspiring the greatest novelist of our people.
In 1947, Mihail Sadoveanu donated the property to the Iasi agronomy Institute. The tower castle turned a new page of its history.. But nobody and nothing could ever succeed in driving away from these places the shining shadows brought to life by the grand master of the Romanian literature and born eternal.'
On the 6th of November 1980 the Coposu House celebrated its inauguration as 'Mihail Sadoveanu' Memorial Museum. The festivity was attended by: the writer's daughter, Profira Sadoveanu, his wife, Valeria Sadoveanu, Teoctist, Metropolitan Bishop of Moldavia and Suceava, writers, men of culture, Iasi officials, a large audience. The hosts were museum specialists of the Iasi Romanian Literature Museum, those who by their efforts and endeavors bore fruit in the new destination and aspect of the building. They were joined by Mr Constantin Mitru, brother-in-law and secretary of the great writer, without whose initiative and labour this repository of our cultural memory wouldn't have existed. The carvings by Dan Covataru in the museum garden piously keeps the funerary urn of Valeria Sadoveanu's ashes. The writer's wish to rest here was not yet accomplished. We remind his words spoken on the 6th of February 1938, when he was awarded the title 'doctor honoris causa' by the University of Iasi: 'Whatever my destiny would be, you well know that I'll always return here like a bee after flying in the sky comes back to its swarm without which it cannot live. I do hope that my last trip, the final one, will be still here. I wish this moment came as late as possible, but the odds and frailty of our mortal shell could bring it soon.'
The main data related to the history of the Coposu House - famous for the personalities who built it and lived there - come from historian Dan Badarau, a researcher in Iasi's history. Therefore, here it is the most authoritarian source on the subject.
'In 1834 aga (the police prefect) Kogalniceanu used to possess a vineyard on this place, right in the middle of the old vineyards of Iasi, mentioned by chronicles, as wars were waged many times here.'
Mihail Kogalniceanu had a large house in town which still exists today; but he gave way to his fantasy and built for himself a villa in the middle of the vineyard, close to Iasi's gates. He helps raised the tower from which the entire Moldavia can be seen, from the Prut Valley down to Ceahlau mountains.
In 1856 the villa was already several years old. Struck by one of those financial difficulties so typical of him the former princely official had rented it.
On the 6th of November 1980 the Coposu House celebrated its inauguration as 'Mihail Sadoveanu' Memorial Museum. The festivity was attended by: the writer's daughter, Profira Sadoveanu, his wife, Valeria Sadoveanu, Teoctist, Metropolitan Bishop of Moldavia and Suceava, writers, men of culture, Iasi officials, a large audience. The hosts were museum specialists of the Iasi Romanian Literature Museum, those who by their efforts and endeavors bore fruit in the new destination and aspect of the building. They were joined by Mr Constantin Mitru, brother-in-law and secretary of the great writer, without whose initiative and labour this repository of our cultural memory wouldn't have existed. The carvings by Dan Covataru in the museum garden piously keeps the funerary urn of Valeria Sadoveanu's ashes. The writer's wish to rest here was not yet accomplished. We remind his words spoken on the 6th of February 1938, when he was awarded the title 'doctor honoris causa' by the University of Iasi: 'Whatever my destiny would be, you well know that I'll always return here like a bee after flying in the sky comes back to its swarm without which it cannot live. I do hope that my last trip, the final one, will be still here. I wish this moment came as late as possible, but the odds and frailty of our mortal shell could bring it soon.'
