Buzescu (Romania) (AFP)

In Romanian fields or on the outskirts of cities, improbable Asian pagodas glitter with a thousand ornaments, cutting with the modest houses of the surroundings: they are the "Roma palaces", an unprecedented architectural phenomenon translating the quest for social prestige within a marginalized minority.

These palaces, which have appeared in the thousands since the end of communism with the enrichment of certain Roma, are recognizable by their imposing proportions and their richly decorated facades alternating sheet metal cladding, plaster statues and marble columns. They sometimes display the dollar sign or the logo of a famous German car brand.

But it is above all their roofs - pyramids and superimposed, reminiscent of temples of the Far East - that surprise.

According to the Romanian architect Rudolf Gräf, author of a study on this subject, these roofs represent an "exacerbation" of typical Romanian architectural elements.

Often ridiculed and described as "absolute kitsch", "the Roman architecture reflects, paradoxically, a part of Romanian history, contrary to the contemporary architecture implemented by the State itself," he says. he to AFP.

These buildings differ according to the region: in Transylvania (center) they are inspired by Catholic churches, in Banat (south-west) they copy neo-classical constructions, while in the south and in the east they reinterpret the style Neo-Romanian, recalling the traditional houses of the peasants or the buildings of the boyars, the old local barons, underlines it.

- Court replica -

Sometimes these constructions simply reproduce an official building that has marked the spirit of the owner: in Buzescu (south), Dan Finutu, a well-off Roma who died in 2012, had a replica of the court which had sentenced him to prison for scam in the 1990s.

With its dozens of palaces erected on both sides of the main street, this town of 4,000 inhabitants located near the capital Bucharest represents a concentrate of this phenomenon born in the 1990s.

The fall of the Ceausescu regime at the end of 1989 indeed encouraged this nomadic minority to assert its identity, after being reduced to slavery for several centuries and subjected to forced assimilation under communism.

"The first palaces were built in the early 1990s, when the Roma recovered some of the gold confiscated by the communists," says one of Buzescu's Roma leaders, Costica Stancu, referring to the gold coins passed down from generation to generation by Roma women before being seized by the regime under a decree dating back to 1978.

Other Roma have spent the money by selling scrap metal or doing odd jobs to build houses to shine and impress while reflecting the social hierarchy of this community of around 2 million people. people, most of whom still live in poverty.

Expression of the "prestige and success" of the owners, in the words of Mr. Gräf, these palaces thus give rise to an outbid between neighbors: new floors, additional towers and ever more imposing columns are added and as the initial building, according to the evolution of the fortune - and tastes - of the owners.

- Gold and poverty -

These constructions are abundantly photographed by the tourists of passage, even if they are not visited. With a few exceptions, their architects remained anonymous.

While most of the Roma minority, with a population of about two million, still live in poverty, the sources of financing for these buildings are often obscure.

Paradoxically, their owners often only occupy one or two small rooms, large rooms with marble floors and golden decorations used only on festive occasions.

"The maintenance is very expensive," said Mr. Stancu, 72, according to which the phenomenon begins to slow down.

Already, many of Buzescu's buildings seem deserted and "the palaces under construction will not be completed, for lack of money," fears the head, who himself lives in a small house surrounded by a garden.

With more than four million of its nationals emigrated in recent years, Romania is experiencing a worrying depopulation, with many of its villages now only having elderly people.

An evolution also noted by Lidia, a sexagenarian owner of such a palace in Buzescu. "Things are not the same as before, people have left, who have in Bucharest, who are abroad, they want to make money and stay there," she says bitterly in front of the imposing portal of its field.

© 2019 AFP