St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Cathedral

St. Joseph's Cathedral is the main Roman Catholic church in Bucharest and the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest. It stands at 19 General Berthelot Street, in the city centre. Construction began in 1873 at the initiative of Bishop Ignatius Paoli, following plans by Viennese architect Friedrich von Schmidt; the foundation stone was laid in 1875, and the work, supervised in turn by monk-architect Alfons Zegers and architect Carol Benesch, was completed in 1883. The cathedral was consecrated on 15 February 1884. Its architectural style belongs to Historicism, combining Romanesque forms with Gothic accents. The building measures 40 metres in length and 22 metres in width, with twin front towers rising to about 40 metres. The interior seats roughly 700 people and can hold nearly 2,000 at full capacity. The main altar, carved from white Carrara marble, was made in Rome. The organ, built by the Wegenstein workshop of Timișoara in 1930, has 3,375 pipes and 54 main stops, making it one of the finest in the country. The original stained-glass windows, destroyed in the 1944 bombing, were remade in 1980. Since 2013, the cathedral has held the relics of Blessed Vladimir Ghika. Pope John Paul II (1999) and Pope Francis (2019) both celebrated Mass here. The building was damaged in the 1940 and 1977 earthquakes and has been at the centre of a long-running dispute over an office tower built illegally less than ten metres away, which threatens its structural stability. Worth visiting for its Historicist architecture and its role as a spiritual landmark for Romania's Catholic community.