Theodor Pallady Museum – Melik House

• situated 22, Spatarului St.
• built somewhere between 1750-1760 Melik House is the oldest civilian building from Bucharest that was preserved in its original form
• nobody knows who the first owner of the house was but it was sold in 1815 by its heirs to an Armenian merchant named Chevorc Nazaretoglu – his real name being Nazaretian
• Chevroc Nazaretian and his wife moved in the house in 1822
• Agop Nazaretian, Chevorc’s son, dowered the house to his daughter Ana,at her marriage with the architect Iacob Melik
• the name of the house comes from Iacob Melik who lived here together with his family and who repaired the house many times

• Ana Nazaretian Melik, who died in 1913, bequeathed the house to the Armenian community from Bucharest, with the wish to found an asylum for the poor widows of the community
• Eugen Melik, descendant, attacked the will and got the property for a short period of time
• the Armenian community won the trial and an asylum was arranged that functioned between 1921-1947
• during this period different tenants lived in the house and it suffered modifications and degradations
• towards the end of the 1960s Gheorghe and Serafina Raut, husband and wife, negotiated with the authorities from Bucharest the donation and partial redemption of the art collection they owned – a building in Place Daufin, and in one of the appartaments, they used to let, lived for a rather long period of time Theodor Pallad
• one of the essential condition of the donation was to assure a proper place to exhibit the art collection and to host Pallady Museum
• between 1970-1994 the National Art Museum from Bucharest used it as a place to deposit valuable works of art that were going to be restored or those being in transit
• in 1994 it has gained its final destination – Casa Melik, Serafina and Gheorghe Raut art collection and Pallady Museum – museal complex
• the size of the rooms, the breadth of the windows and the width of the doors were preserved inside the house
• the pieces of furniture are entirely pieces of collection
• the closed veranda hosts every Saturday morning courses of initiation for children in the art of drawing and colour 

    Information phone: +4021/2114979