Via Valahia passes through the heart of this village, designed and planned to be a model village for post-war Romania.
The village of Antonesti appeared during the Second World War, due to the massive floods in July 1941 in the Arges Valley. These floods severely affected the villages of Arefu and Corbeni, with over 30 houses completely destroyed and many others severely damaged.
Marshal Ion Antonescu, who was familiar with the area as he was born in Pitesti, requested the then-prime minister, Mihai Antonescu, to build a model village in the area that would “set the direction for rural development in Romania.”
Although both bear the same name, Mihai Antonescu is not the brother of Marshal Ion Antonescu. The two met in 1938 when Mihai Antonescu, a lawyer in Bucharest, represented Marshal Ion Antonescu in a bigamy trial.
The design of this model village, intended for post-war Romania, was carried out by architect Richard Bordenache, a professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Bucharest.
The workforce for building this model village was provided by establishing a camp for Russian prisoners in Corbeni (Oesti). Around 800 Ukrainian-origin Russian prisoners, captured in Odessa, were brought to the camp. A specific cemetery was built for the deceased prisoners of war at Oesti.
According to the project, the Romanian model village in Corbeni was intended to include houses for the flood victims, an Administrative Palace, a House for Social Works, a dispensary, a maternity ward, a cultural center with a library and kindergarten, a bank, a canteen, public baths, a central marketplace similar to an agora, a school, a sports stadium, a train station, and a tourist inn.
The land on which this model village was built was donated by the Erbasu family. The land was divided into 39 lots, each measuring 2000 square meters, arranged in correlation with the street structure, connected to the administrative center area.
The houses were designed and built in the style of traditional Romanian rural architecture – massive river stone foundations with a thickness of 60 cm, double-fronted barns shared between neighbors, upper floors with a hall, and covered with tiles. Each house also had a small household area, including a well, a barn, a coop, and a garden where exclusively old Romanian varieties of plants were grown, such as patul and cretesc.
The identity of each house was not determined by postal numbers but by bas-reliefs or paintings on the facade representing plants or animals. Therefore, in Corbeni, you will find houses named “Casa cu Floarea Soarelui” (Sunflower House), “Casa cu Cocos” (Rooster House), “Casa cu Cerb” (Deer House), “Casa cu Paun” (Peacock House), and others.
Despite Romania being at war, the houses were inaugurated and handed over to the people on October 17, 1943, in the presence of Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu and his wife, Maria Antonescu, the wife of Ion Antonescu.
From 1943 to 1944, work continued on the cultural center and tourist inn but ceased after August 23, 1944, so the entire project was not completed.
The Church of St. John in Antonesti.
As no village is complete without a church, Marshal Ion Antonescu ordered the construction of a church for the flood victims who were to occupy the newly built model village. Thus, during the same period when the Antonesti village was being constructed, Ukrainian-origin Russian prisoners from the Oiesti Camp built the Church of St. John in Antonesti. The church houses an iconography painted in 1942 in a Russian-style manner by one of the prisoners detained in the camp.
The church was struck by lightning in 1942, and the work ceased until after 1990. It was completed through the efforts of Archbishop Calinic Argatu.
