Press release
2 April 2025
Romanian Academy celebrates 159 years since its foundation
The Romanian Academy celebrates 159 years since its foundation. The event will be celebrated in a festive session on Friday, April 4, 2025. The event will take place in the Romanian Academy Hall, starting at 10 a.m., and will be followed by an Open Day.
On this anniversary, Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop, President of the Romanian Academy, will highlight several significant milestones in the history of the highest forum for culture and science of Romanians and recall its fundamental role in preserving and consolidating Romanian identity. Academician Ion Tighineanu, President of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, is invited to speak during the session to emphasise the close collaborative relationship between the two academies.
Academician Ioan Dumitrache, Secretary General of the Romanian Academy, will present, for the first time during a festive anniversary session, some of the construction and rehabilitation projects of buildings from the Romanian Academy’s heritage. The presentation will be accompanied by a projection regarding the construction of the new headquarters of the Romanian Academy, which will host the new auditorium, the offices of the 14 sections of the Academy, meeting rooms, reception and protocol spaces.
Starting at 11 am, the Romanian Academy will offer a program of visits to the most representative spaces in its current headquarters, including the Academy’s Auditorium, the Academy’s Memorial and the Academicians’ Club. The public will then be invited to the Romanian Academy Library to see the exhibition “Romanian Press. Between Tradition and Modernity”, which includes new elements from the Library’s rich collection of periodicals. Explanations by specialists will accompany the guided tours.
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Founded on April 1, 1866, as an institution of absolute necessity for the young state resulting from the union of the Romanian Principalities (1859), the Romanian Academic Society, which became the Romanian Academy, had, from the beginning, a strong national mission, manifested in several directions.
Symbolically, the first 14 founding members of the Society, appointed by Decree on April 22/May 3, 1866, were Romanian intellectuals and patriots who represented the territories still under the rule of foreign empires: Transylvania (Timotei Cipariu, George Barițiu, Gavril Munteanu), Maramureș (Iosif Hodoș, Alexandru Roman), Bucovina (Alexandru Hurmuzaki, Ambrosiu Dimitrovici, later replaced by Ion G. Sbiera), Banat (Andrei Mocioni, Vincențiu Babeș), Bessarabia (Alexandru Hasdeu, Constantin Stamati, Ioan Străjescu), Macedonia (Ioan D. Caragiani, Dimitrie Cozacovici). They were joined, a year later, by seven other members, representing Moldavia (Vasile Alecsandri, Constantin Negruzzi, Vasile Alexandrescu-Urechia) and Muntenia (Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Constantin A. Rosetti, Ioan C. Massim, August Treboniu Laurian).
In accordance with its national vocation, the Romanian Academy's first mission, which has remained constant throughout its existence, is the standardisation of the Romanian language and the study of the history of the Romanian people. Today, the Romanian Academy presents to the Romanian nation monumental works, elaborated by its members and researchers, such as the “Thesaurus Dictionary of the Romanian Language”, in 19 volumes, with over 18,000 pages, the Treatise “History of the Romanians”, in 10 volumes, now in its second edition, the “General Dictionary of Romanian Literature”, in over 7,000 pages, the complete facsimile of Eminescu’s manuscripts, in 14,000 pages, bound in 38 volumes. To these are added tens of thousands of scientific works published in prestigious journals and publishing houses in the country and abroad, works by authors or elaborated in scientific collectives, constituting an intellectual heritage that does honour to Romania.
Currently, the Romanian Academy is a member of important interacademic organisations in Europe and around the world, its members are elected to prestigious foreign academies, and the institutes and research centres it coordinates perform at an international level.
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