According to Romanian archaeologist Vasile Pârvan, the river Mousaios (Μουσαίος) mentioned in a letter from Ioannis Soranus, governor of Scythia Minor, to the archbishop of Caesarea Mazaca () should be identified with the modern Buzău River. The document, kept in copies at the Vatican Library and San Marco Library in Venice, tells about the martyrdom of a Christian missionary by the name of Sabbas, drowned by the Goths in the river Mousaios. Beginning with the 20th century, Sabbas has been presented as the spiritual patron of the city of Buzău as well as of several local villages.
Several graves (3rd to 5th centuries) were found in Buzău, as well as coins that prove the presence of a settlement on the territory of the modern city.
Market town and bishopric in the Middle Ages
The earliest mention of Buzău as a market town (târg) and customs station is found in a document, dated January 31, 1431, and issued by Dan II, voivod of Wallachia. The document stated that salesmen from Brașov were free to trade in several Wallachian towns (Buzău, among them) just as they were during the reign of Mircea cel Bătrân. These privileges have been later reinforced by Vlad III the Impaler, who stated that the roads to be taken by the salesmen were to be: via Rucăr, Prahova, Teleajen or Buzău.Petcu, 2002, pp. 23 Gustav Treiber, in his work Buzau, published in Siebenbürgische Vierteljahrsschrift (1935), states that prior to the 12th century, the city was surrounded by a wall with four gates towards the four main directions.
In 1500, Radu cel Mare created The Bishopric of Buzău, making the town a spiritual center of Eastern Wallachia. In 1507, Buzău appears (under the name of Boza) for the first time on a map, made by Nicolaus Germanus. At the time, the city was the 4th largest city of Wallachia, and an important trade partner of Brașov. Between 1503 and 1515, the salesmen from Buzău traded merchandise worth 2,245,835 aspres (an Ottoman currency). A document dated 1536 shows that the town was administered by one județ (mayor) and 12 elected pârgari (city councillors).Petcu, 2002, pp. 24 Tunnels dating back to the 16th century connect the bishopric's complex, the city center and the Crâng Park (at the time, only a large forest at the town's outskirts). Their role was to store supply and evacuate people in case of danger.
In 1571, the Banu monastery was erected. The monastery's name, "Banu", indicates the nobility title of its builder, ban Andronic Cantacuzino. The monastery church was rebuilt by Andreiana, wife of Șerban Cantacuzino, in 1722. After the monastic assets secularizing act of 1863, the monastery was dismantled; its church, however, was spared.
A 1575 document mentions the bazaar (permanent market with shops, stores, cellars, storage rooms). The Bazaar of Buzău was the second oldest in Wallachia. At the end of the 16th century, Buzău was divided in four parts: the bishopric with its servants, the Banu monastery and its servants, the old market and the city (located between the bishopric and the monastery).
During the last decade of the 16th century, around 18,000 Serbs settled in Wallachia. Several families made Buzău their home, by founding a neighbourhood known to this day by the name Serbs and located on the bank of the Buzău River. Later, in 1792–1838, many Bulgarian refugees settled in the same neighbourhood.Petcu, 2002, pp. 27-34 Due to similarities of the mother tongues spoken by the two ethnic groups, the locals called the new refugees also Serbs. The Bulgarians were given land by the river where they created vegetable gardens.
Successive destructions
The late Middle Ages brought a wave of destruction to the town, Buzău being completely or partially destroyed by multiple wars and foreign military invasions, as well as natural disasters.
The army of Mihai Viteazul was located in Buzău in 1596. After the army left, the city was devastated in 1597 by Ottoman and Tatar raids. The next year, Mihai Viteazul brought gifts to the inhabitants of the city to compensate for the damages. The chronicler Balthasar Walter described the tatar invasion of 1597:
In April 1616, many houses in Buzău were burnt down during a Polish invasion, during one of the Moldavian Magnate Wars. The inhabitants took refuge in the nearby mountains and forests. All existing land deeds were lost at the event. One year later, in July 1617, the city was once again occupied by the Ottoman army.
Buzău was pillaged by Tatars again in 1623, as pointed out by Matei Basarab in a 1633 letter:
A Turkish invasion in 1659 again led to the city being burnt down and destroyed, and the locals being taken captive. In 1679, Buzău was pillaged again by the Ottomans. The city was rebuilt every time, thus appearing on a 1700 map of Wallachia, printed in Padova by stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino. The map shows 22 other cities and market towns of the country.
After a period of relative peace, during which the bishopric was subsidized by the domn to open a school in Greek and another in Slavonic, in 1739, during a Russo-Turkish War, Russian troops as well as Frilow's Cossacks ravaged through Buzău, taking the bishop with them as they went.Petcu, 2002, p.31
During another Russo-Turkish War, Ottoman soldiers burnt all the stores and houses, burning the city to the ground. The bishopric church was also destroyed, and the bishop moved temporarily to Bucharest. The Banu monastery church escaped destruction, only to be destroyed in 1774 by an earthquake. Also, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787 - 1792, the city was once again destroyed.Petcu, 2002, p.33 The long string of war-caused damage went on in 1806 and 1807, when the Ottoman army burnt down the city to ruins leaving 230 people dead. The locals fled to the Nișcov river valley, from where they returned only in 1812.Petcu, 2002, p.34
The cholera and bubonic plague epidemics at the beginning of the 19th century also decimated the city's population (see Caragea's plague).
The last time the city was devastated by war was in 1821 at the Greek War of Independence.Petcu, 2002, p.35 After that, in light of the establishment of the Organic Regulations, a period of reconstruction and modernisation began. Also, Wallachia stopped being a theatre of operations in the wars between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, the conflicts moving further away, in Crimea, the Southern and Western Balkans and the Caucasus.
Thus, although Buzău's name is attested by documents as a river with a polis on its banks, since the 4th century, and as a market town since 1431, the oldest building in the city is the Vergu-Mănăilă house, erected as recently as the 18th century, around 1780. The Vergu-Mănăilă house was owned at the time by a high-ranking boyar named Vergu, who owned a pub and a bakery near the house.
19th-century development
During the 19th century, the city overcame the difficulties of repeated reconstruction, and started to develop as a modern city with solid businesses and a cultural life. The Crâng forest became a leisure place for the locals around 1829, and was eventually organized as a public garden by 1850.
Schools began to be set up, as in 1831 the bishopric opened a school for muralists and icon painters, led by Nicolae Teodorescu and attended by Gheorghe Tattarescu. One year later, the National School (the first school in Buzău to teach in the Romanian language) was open, and in 1838 Școala Normală (a school for teachers) was inaugurated by . Școala normală trained teachers for the city schools and for 115 villages. The Buzău theological seminar was open in 1836. It was the first secondary school in Buzău and the second theological school in Wallachia, after the one in Bucharest.
The oldest known census in Buzău showed, in 1832, a total population of 2567, of which one was Austrian, one was English, 18 were Jewish and the rest Romanian.
Around 1837–1840, public lighting was introduced on the main street. The street lamps were using tallow candles. By 1861, the number of public street lamps grew from 38 to 50. In 1841 the streets were realigned "by urban rules".Petcu, p.40
By 1842, the city had a stable doctor, a drugstore, a fire brigade and an officially authorised midwife.
During the Wallachian revolution of 1848, a "National Guard", supervised by Barbu and Nicolae Bălcescu was set up immediately after the government was organized in Bucharest in June. However, the revolution was crushed by Russian and Ottoman forces, and Buzău was occupied by the Russian army for three years. The Russian army briefly occupied Buzău again in 1853 during the Crimean War. After the occupation ended, the city's development was resumed.Petcu, p.123
At the Ad-hoc divans organised after the Congress of Paris in 1856, a large majority of representatives of Buzău voted for Wallachia's union with Moldova. Later on, after a personal union was completed on 5 February 1859, Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza was welcomed enthusiastically by the inhabitants of Buzău and was persuaded to spend the night in the city on his way from Iași to Bucharest. The newly elected Domn of both Wallachia and Moldova left the city the next day via Strada Mare, a street known today by the name of Bulevardul Unirii (Union Boulevard).Petcu, p. 124
The buildings on the Cuza Vodă Street (at the time known as Strada Târgului -- Market Street) were erected between 1850 and 1880 in the style of the 19th-century South-Eastern European commercial houses two-storey buildings with shops on the ground floor, and residences on the top floor.
Cultural life blossomed, as in 1852, the first theater show in Buzău took place. In 1854, a printing press was imported by the bishopric from Vienna, and was subsequently used to print the Buzău Bible, the fourth Romanian bible (the first three being the Bucharest Bible in 1688, one printed in Blaj in 1792 and another printed in Saint Petersburg in 1819).
Public lighting was enhanced in 1860 by introducing petrol lamps. In the same year, street numbers were assigned to houses, and streets were paved with stones. The Gârlași Hospital (nowadays, the Infectious Diseases Hospital) was open in 1865, being the first permanent city hospital.
The Moldavia theater was open in 1898 in a building in central Buzău. The 400-seat hall was the location where important Romanian artists that came to Buzău, such as Nicolae Leonard, and George Enescu performed.
In 1899, mayor Nicu Constantinescu began the construction of the Communal Palace, a project completed in 1903. The Communal Palace is now the city's most prominent landmark. Constantinescu also decided to refactor the central streets of Buzău, which were narrow and winding, a heritage of the market town history and the repeated destructions followed by disorganized rebuilding of the city. Thus, the wide and straight Park Boulevard (linking the city center and the Crâng Park) and the Railway Station Boulevard (linking the center to the railway station) were built.
During this period, Constantin Brâncuși and Ion Luca Caragiale were briefly residents of Buzău. Caragiale leased a restaurant near the railway station in 1894 and lived there for a year. During this period, he also held a public conference, whose intended subject, Prose writing techniques was changed at the last moment into Causes of human stupidity. Brâncuși lived in the city in the summer of 1914, after Eliza Seceleanu, a young local landowner's widow, had commissioned him to create two sculptures: Prayer and the bust of Petre Stănescu, her late husband. After creating the two sculptures in Paris, Brâncuși brought them to Buzău and lived there for a few months while working to prepare the sculptures' stands. Both sculptures decorated Stănescu's tomb at the local Dumbrava cemetery for a while, but they were since moved to the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, being replaced by two copies.Ştefan, pp. 58-61 The copies have been stolen in 1999 and have not been replaced since.