It’s November. It’s cold & dark outside but warm inside. So here we go again with another quiet evening at the Glitch Library, where Aici a Stat cultural storyteller Ana Rubeli unfolds “Libraries with Stories,” a narrative journey through Romania’s hidden bibliophile riches. Her talk, part invitation and part treasure map, guides us through a landscape where every neighborhood might harbor an undiscovered library, where monastery collections hold surprising volumes, and where private collections tell stories of cultural resistance. Her voice carries the warmth of someone who has spent countless hours in the company of both books and buildings, understanding how they collectively shape our cultural memory.
The Inheritance of Stories
“My great-grand-grandparents have been living on the same street since 1862,” Rubeli begins, tracing her connection to libraries through a family history that spans generations. She speaks of an old, ancient library, now lost to time – a loss that sparked her own mission to reconstruct not just a collection of books, but a piece of cultural memory. In her current home on the same historic street, she has assembled a personal library of 5,500 volumes, each book a thread in the fabric of cultural continuity she works to preserve.
Libraries as Living Heritage
Rubeli’s approach to cultural heritage weaves together three fundamental values: historical significance, aesthetic beauty, and symbolic meaning. “A house with a beautiful library and a valuable book placed within it,” she reflects, “multiplies both the value of the object and the experience of encountering that book.” This multiplication of value becomes a recurring theme throughout her talk, as she guides us through Romania’s hidden library treasures.
The Keepers of Memory
Her stories are peppered with vivid characters – like the curator with an interwar-period mustache at the Dumitru Furnică Minovici Library, who transports visitors directly into Furnică’s era. These personal encounters highlight Rubeli’s belief that “the person sanctifies the place,” suggesting that passionate individuals in cultural spaces can transform our experience of heritage.
Preserving the Past, Embracing the Future
As a holder of a Master’s degree in Heritage Studies, Rubeli sees her field as “an extremely friendly place that can save us as a society.” She notes how the subject of heritage, once perceived as arid, has been gradually “tamed” in recent years. Digital libraries, she observes, are increasingly vital in this preservation effort, offering new ways to protect and share our cultural inheritance.
The Architecture of Memory
Rubeli shares fascinating insights about the architectural features of historic libraries, including the strategic use of stained glass windows in Romanian architecture. These weren’t merely decorative elements but served practical purposes, offering privacy in an era when houses were more exposed to street view. Such details reveal how architecture and daily life intertwined in ways that shaped our cultural spaces.
Survival Through Stories
Perhaps most intriguing are her accounts of how some intellectuals preserved their private libraries during the Communist era by declaring their homes as museums. “On Sundays, between 2:00 and 4:00, the public could visit your house,” she explains, describing this clever act of cultural preservation that saved both buildings and books from nationalization. These stories of resistance through culture offer a powerful reminder of how libraries have served as bastions of intellectual freedom.
Lost and Found
The evening’s most poignant moment comes as Rubeli describes the loss of over 500,000 volumes and manuscripts when the Central University Library was set ablaze during the 1989 revolution – what she calls “one of the greatest losses of contemporary Bucharest.” Yet her tone remains hopeful as she discusses new initiatives, like the recently restored Museum of the Book and Romanian Exile in Craiova, offering free visits for the next five years.
A Living Archive
Through her work documenting historic buildings and promoting sustainable heritage practices, Rubeli demonstrates how the past can inform our future. Her approach to cultural storytelling goes beyond mere preservation – it’s about creating living connections between communities and their cultural heritage, whether through media partnerships, archive research, or the simple act of sharing stories about beloved libraries.
As the talk draws to a close, Rubeli invites the audience to share their own library discoveries, embodying the collaborative spirit of cultural preservation she advocates. Her work reminds us that heritage isn’t just about preserving buildings and books – it’s about maintaining the living connections between people, places, and the stories they hold.
Ana Rubeli‘s Design Sessions talk, a lucky number 7, is part of the Glitch Library’s knowledge-sharing program, designed to bring together artists, designers, and the general public. Past talks have included visual artist Dan Vezentan, book designer Esther de Vries, graphic designer Richard Niessen, Mihai Popescu from Graphomat, and many others exploring the intersections of design, culture, and creative practice.
The Glitch Library offers the perfect setting to engage with talks, exhibitions, and the growing collection of art and design materials that ignite new perspectives and possibilities. Visit us to explore more, reflect on the intersections between art and knowledge, and participate in our ongoing dialogue about culture and creativity.
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- Libraries with Stories: Ana Rubeli on Cultural Heritage and the Poetry of Books and Buildings
- Design Side Paths: Exploring the Library of the Palace of Typographic Masonry with Richard Niessen at Rezidența9
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- A Talk that Sounds Like a Book: Mihai Popescu and the Art of Making Books with Sound
- Trying to bring some strangeness into the world – an encounter with graphic designer Richard Niessen
