"At Bolta Rece, time passes, friends stay"

On Rece Street, across the road from Vila ”Sonet” - the house of the poet Mihai Codreanu, there was a legendary place of the city: Bolta Rece Restaurant.

The first documentary attestation is found on January 17, 1786 and describes the building and the place of the pub that was called 235 years ago "Borta Rece". The name came from the vast branches of cellars on several levels where the old wines from the most famous vineyards were kept cold.

In 1799, these cellars served as wine depots for the court of Field Marshal Potemkin, the favorite of Catherine Catherine II of Russia. In the restaurant lounge, the meetings of the members of the Junimea (Titu Maiorescu, Iacob Negruzzi, Mihai Eminescu, AD Xenopol, Ioan Slavici, Vasile Pogor, Nicolae Gane) who stopped here at "a drop of taifas" in the atmosphere of merriment and fiddle music according to the motto:

"Here enters who wants and remains who drinks!"

It was called Universitas Vinorum - University of Wines and Iacob Negruzzi, one of the founders of Junimia, told in his book" Memories of Junimea "about the literary agapes from Bolta Rece as true" drunken and big food parties ".

The great storyteller Ion Creangă and the poet Mihai Eminescu met here and formed a beautiful and lasting friendship. The chroniclers of the time say that they used to tell stories in the cool clouds of the Cold Vault.

There are other restaurants that have borrowed this name in Bucharest (founded in 1889) and in

Sibiu in 2008. Even today the place retains its uniqueness and is considered a historical monument and a tourist symbol of the area of ​​Moldova and Iasi.