Most people know Theodor Aman from school or from a street bearing his name. Few know that he also left behind a house — built to his own plans, lived in, painted, engraved — and that it still stands today, exactly as he left it.

It's the first artist's home-studio in Romania, open as a museum since 1908, a few years after the painter's death. His wife, Ana Aman, donated it to the state along with the entire collection, honoring his explicit wish that the house become a museum.

What you find here is something different from a conventional museum. The building and its interior have been preserved exactly as Aman conceived them — from the murals and stained glass windows to the carved door frames, ornate ceilings, studio paneling, and furniture he designed himself. The exterior decorations were made together with his close friend, the sculptor Karl Storck. The space itself is a work of art.

The rooms flow naturally into one another: the studio with its particular quality of light, the drawing room, the dining room, the library carved by the artist's own hand — where some of his books are still kept today. On display are 165 oil paintings tracing his full artistic evolution, from large historical compositions to portraits, landscapes and genre scenes. Alongside them, an extensive collection of etchings in aquatint — a technique that earned him membership in the Society of Etchers in Paris — plus the original plates and the printing press he brought back from Paris in 1872.

There's also a more intimate layer of the collection that many visitors overlook: oriental costumes, weapons inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, Romanian and oriental vessels, hookahs — objects Aman used as props, recognizable in the paintings hanging on the very same walls. His cello is there too. He was a sculptor, printmaker, teacher, and co-founder of the first School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. The museum tells all of this without ever announcing it.

Practical information

Str. C.A. Rosetti nr. 8, Sector 1, Bucharest — a few minutes' walk from Piața Romană.

Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 — 18:00 (last entry at 17:30).

Admission: 20 lei per person. 

By public transport: buses 122, 137, 138 or 268.