“Today, more than ever, when the world is confused and shattered by conflicts, we have to be more firm than ever in our Faith and to look for what unites and not what separates us.”
Marie 1936

"In a warm June night we start for Balchik to film the most exciting residence of Romanian Queen Marie. Tenha Juva – the Serene Nest, as the queen named this spot on the Black Sea coast, is embraced with legends and delusions. We travel in silence, as if we expect a meeting with the mystery of a shrine. The huge summer stars shine as diamond buttons on the black robe of the night. There is something jesting and challenging in their twinkling as if they are awaiting the touch of somebody’s fingers, taking away the velvet secrets of the night from its shoulders.
Suddenly, the winding road goes steeply downwards. The car speeds and our eyes, gazing at the endless sky, cannot catch with us. The dashing run of the wheels abruptly stops in front of half open massive gates. The gap exudes a soft light and calls us gently. Behind the threshold, a legend expects us about a woman, whose wildness and greatness surged the Balkans and built its own shelter from reality here, in Balchik.
Under the heavy tree crowns, the tired twentieth century has sat down undisturbed. The twentieth century… It gave human kind the confidence that the mystery of the Universe could be solved, but also gave people a new fear. The fear that there is nothing absolute – neither space nor time, nor good or evil or sin. Nations glorify themselves and stigmatize their opponents, often describing them as inhuman. The age-old power of monarchy is cracking. Injustice is eating Europe up. By mistake or inevitably, human kind is overwhelmed by the sense of moral anarchy – threateningly and excitingly at the same time. Wars tear apart the heart of Mother Earth and cover her body with crosses of known and unknown youths. An age that dresses Europe in mourning for long… The twentieth century remains here in Balchik. The palace still hides its rises and falls under its thick shadows. The life of a queen is tributary to its own pace. Her journeys and quests stop here, in the embrace of this century…
The night sky slowly fades and raises the heavy sleepy cover off the Palace. Above the thick green trees red mill chimneys rise as rabbit ears, hidden and nimble. Each awoken ray lights up a new picturesque view. Faraway sceneries and remembered looks into the past, hanging terraces, orthodox chapel and Turkish fountains. Winding paths along artificial caves and secret spots. Imposing trees arranged in a row as a reef hang from the very cliff edge with branches reaching out for the sea. In the green shade, there is a marble throne and in front of it – a small table made of broken Roman column, still awaiting their Queen.
But why here, in Balchik?
We know that Queen Marie found a way to express her craving for beauty and harmony by creating her own atmosphere everywhere and in everything. The picture revealed by the morning is nothing like the places we know. The adventurous splendor of Cotroceni and Pelisor – two castles with romantic towers – is missing. The fairy emanation is missing of the small house in Sinaya woods hidden among pines. The ascetic furniture is missing of the low white edifice near Yash, which sheltered the royal family during World War І.
What did Balchik mean to the queen?
A symbol of victory and superior power? A way to affirm Romanian presence in Dobrudzha? A romantic retreat from the world’s intrigues and new dangers?
But was this enough for her to want her heart to remain here unburied forever?
Perhaps the Palace is a romantic epitaph, written by the Queen herself? Perhaps the edifices and gardens are illustrations of the most precious moments of her life? The palace, her last adventure, has turned into a tomb of a Balkan queen.
Around the minaret, stretching far into the sky, swallows are flying. In the crystal clear sky a star has not yet found her way home… "
Rosista Malcheva-Zlatcova