Băneasa ForestBăneasa Forest (Pădurea Băneasa in Romanian

Romanian language

Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

) is a wood in the north of Bucharest

Bucharest

Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. Covering some 80,000 hectare

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

s, the ground is located in proximity to Băneasa

Baneasa

Băneasa is a borough in the north side of Bucharest, near the Băneasa Lake . Like all north-side districts of Bucharest, it is relatively sparsely populated, with large areas of parkland...

 neighborhood and Băneasa Airport. On its southern edge, houses a zoological garden, known as Zoo Băneasa

Zoo Baneasa

Zoo Băneasa is a zoo in Bucharest, Romania, located in a northern district of the city, called Băneasa.- References :...

.

History

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989

Romanian Revolution of 1989

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...

 and the end of Romania's communist era

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

, a large portion of the area was transferred from state property back to private persons, who had obtained judicial recognition of their family deeds. According to a 2007 estimate in Jurnalul Naţional

Jurnalul National

Jurnalul Naţional is a Romanian newspaper, part of the Intact media group led by Dan Voiculescu, which also includes the popular TV station Antena 1....

newspaper, some 10,000 hectares had been reassigned through this process. As a consequence, Băneasa Forest also become a site for real-estate development, which was reportedly done at the limit of legality or against the law, and involved several Romanian public figures. According to a 2008 report by Cotidianul

Cotidianul

thumb|right|Old logo of Cotidianul newspaper, used in the [[inter-war period]], and in the early 1990sthumb|right|The logo used between 2003 and 2007...

newspaper, among the latter were businessmen-politicians Gigi Becali

Gigi Becali

George Becali is a controversial Romanian politician and businessman, mostly known for his involvement in the Steaua Bucureşti football club.He has been a Member of the European Parliament since June 2009.-Biography:...

, Dan Voiculescu

Dan Voiculescu

Dan Voiculescu is a Romanian politician and former business man. He is the Vicepresident of the Romanian Senate and founding president of the Conservative Party in Romania. ....

 and Sorin Pantiş. The same journal also claimed that the site was one of the locations at the center of another political scandal, allegedly involving former Mayor of Bucharest

Mayor of Bucharest

The Mayor of Bucharest , sometimes known as the General Mayor, is the head of the Bucharest City Hall in Bucharest, Romania, which is responsible for city-wide affairs, such as the water system, the transport system and the main boulevards...

 and later President

President of Romania

The President of Romania is the head of state of Romania. The President is directly elected by a two-round system for a five-year term . An individual may serve two terms...

 Traian Băsescu

Traian Basescu

Traian Băsescu is the current President of Romania. After serving as the mayor of Bucharest from June 2000 until December 2004, he was elected president in the Romanian Presidential Elections of 2004 and inaugurated on December 20, 2004...

 alongside controversial real-estate developer Puiu Popoviciu. Popoviciu had been previously been accused of using land grants from the Agronomical Institute to consolidate his personal businesses. Both Cotidianul and Jurnalul Naţional cited a private audit

Audit

The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...

 used as justification by developers, according to which the building of facilities in the forest had the positive effect of reducing noise pollution

Noise pollution

Noise pollution is excessive, displeasing human, animal or machine-created environmental noise that disrupts the activity or balance of human or animal life...

, and claimed that the firm in question had among its shareholders the former Environment Minister and Democratic Liberal

Democratic Liberal Party (Romania)

The Democratic Liberal Party is a populist, centre-right party in Romania. It was formed on 15 December 2007, when the Democratic Party merged with the Liberal Democratic Party. From 2004 to 2007, the Democratic Party was part of the governing Justice and Truth Alliance...

 politician Sulfina Barbu

Sulfina Barbu

Sulfina Barbu is a Romanian politician and member of the Chamber of Deputies.- Life :A member of the Democratic Liberal Party, she was the President of the Women Organisation of the Democratic Liberal Party and a former Minister of Environment and Water Management in the Romanian Government between...

.

In cultural reference

Băneasa Forest is assigned a central presence in Noaptea de Sânziene, a novel written after 1949 by Romanian author and researcher Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...

. Referred to as the "forbidden forest" in the English version of the book, it is a paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

site, where the protagonist Ştefan finds escape from the suffering of the modern world.