History of Pitesti

l leaders. For a short period in 1882, Pitești was home to dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale, which has led some to propose that it was the unnamed National Liberal-dominated city depicted in Caragiale's famous play O scrisoare pierdută.

By 1872, a national railway connection with the capital Bucharest and Târgovişte was built, at the same time as one linking Bucharest with Ploieşti through Chitila. Overseen by Imperial German financier Bethel Henry Strousberg, this was the second project of its kind in Romania (after the Bucharest-Giurgiu rail link of 1869). The Piteşti Town Hall was completed in 1886, and currently houses an art gallery. The Argeş County Prefecture, designed by Dimitrie Maimarolu, was erected in 1898–1899 on the site previously occupied by an Orthodox hermitage; it is the present-day site of the County Museum of History and Natural Sciences. Both buildings are eclectic in style, and feature frescoes painted by Iosif Materna.

In 1868-1869, Piteşti was also the first city in Romania to have a recorded Seventh-day Adventist community, formed around Michał Belina-Czechowski, a Polish preacher and former Roman Catholic priest who had returned from the United States (the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Romania was established only after 1918).

From late autumn 1916 to 1918, during the World War I battles on the Romanian front, Piteşti was occupied by the troops of the Central Powers. The city was originally abandoned by the Romanian Army and taken by the German commander August von Mackensen as the front stabilized on the Olt River, before Mackensen was able to occupy Bucharest and the entire southern Romania. During the post-war existence of Greater Romania, Piteşti was a regional cultural center, notably hosting the 1928-1929 series of the magazine Kalende