50 Lei 1966, Romania
| in Krause book | Number: 96a |
| Years of issue: | 01.11.1966 |
| Edition: | -- |
| Signatures: | no signature |
| Serie: | 1966 Issue |
| Specimen of: | 1966 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 145 х 72 |
| Printer: | Imprimeria Bancii Nationale a Romaniei, Bucuresti |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Rhombuses.
Avers:
The engraving on banknote is made after the most famous portrait of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by Carol Popp of Szathmari (official photographer of Alexandru Ioan Cuza), 1864-1865. The size of portrait: 170 x 133 cm.
Description of the portrait:
The ruler is represented standing up, ¾ half profile to the left, frontal look; he is wearing the General of infantry mounted troops (named “dorobanți călări”) uniform. The right hand is resting on a table covered with a green cloth. On the table are two documents and two books, over which stands a cape with egret. The left hand is on the sword’s guard. Behind the character there are a throne (with lion heads, upholstered in red, embroidered “A” letter on the seatback) and a burgundy colored velvet curtain.
Alexandru Ioan Cuza wears more foreign orders, conferred on various occasions: the Orders "Osmanie" and "Medgidie" (bestow by the Ottoman Empire), the Order "St.Mauriciu and Lazar" (Kingdom of Sardinia) and the Order of the "Saviour" (Greece). The painting has the author signature in the lower left corner, written in red: Szathmari. Even though the painting is not dated it could be easily placed in time: 1864-1865, if we take into consideration different elements of the painting (the rulers orders, the documents and books that symbolize the important reforms that he passed between 1864 and 1865).
Alexandru Ioan Cuza (or Alexandru Ioan I, also anglicised as Alexander John Cuza; 20 March 1820 - 15 May 1873) was Prince of Moldavia, Prince of Wallachia, and later Domnitor (ruler) of the Romanian Principalities. He was a prominent figure of the Revolution of 1848 in Moldavia. He initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures.
Son of a lesser Moldovan noble and high-level administrator, born in 1820. He was educated in Iasi, along with Mihail Kogãlniceanu, Vasile Alecsandri, and other future Romanian national leaders. In 1835, he went to Paris, where he complete a degree in letters at the Sorbonne and also studied law. He was active in Romanian student circles, which included Alecsandri, the Golescu brothers, Ion Ghica, Al. G. Golescu, Cezar Boliac, and others. Upon his return to Moldova in 1839, he served in the army briefly and then entered the judicial system. In the later 1840s, h e frequently attended meetings of young Moldovan nationalists and reformers at the Mînjina estate of Costache Negri, along with Alecsandri and Kogãlniceanu.
Ten days after the flight of Metternich from Vienna, Romanian reformers, including Cuza, were meeting in Iasi to plan for the future. He was present at the assembly at the Petersburg Hotel in Iasi in March, which drew up a reform program for Moldova. He promptly arrested by Prince Mihail Sturdza and exiled along with a d ozen of the most "dangerous" reformers. Though wounded in the arrest, he managed to escape, winding up in Blaj for the May Romanian National Assembly. In that same month, he signed the Brasov program of the Moldovan revolutionaries. Subsequently, he was in Bucovina and a member of the Moldovan revolutionary committee organized in June 1848. He served as a member of the executive committee and one of the principal fund raisers.
Following the defeat of the revolutions, Cuza remained in exile in Paris and Constantinople, refusing to accept an amnesty from Prince Sturdza. When Grigore Ghica (who had secretly supported and sheltered many Moldovan revolutionaries in 1848) became Moldovan prince in April 1849, Cuza accompanied him and became involved in Moldovan administration and reform. In 1857, he was elected to the unionist Divan ad hoc in Moldova and active in the National Party. This culminated in 1859, when he was elected Prince of Moldova and then Muntenia, bringing about the de fa cto and then (1861) actual unification of the Romanian principalities into a Romanian national state. Ousted in a coup in 1866, Alexandru Ioan Cuza is remembered as one of the primary founders of modern Romania. (www.ohio.edu)
Carol Szathmari (Hungarian: Szathmáry Pap Károly; Romanian: Carol Popp de Szathmary; 11 January 1812 - 3 July 1887) was an Austro-Hungarian-born painter, lithographer and photographer. He is considered the world's first combat photographer as he took pictures in the battlefield, during the first year of the Russian-Turkish War, later known as the Crimean War (1853-1856).
Carol Popp of Szathmari was born in Cluj on 11th of January 1812. He attended the classes of the city’s Reformed College, developing his intellectual education by travelling and studying at Europe’s greatest universities. In the early 1840th, he established himself in Bucharest, where his painter talents brought him to the attention of the royal court. Szathmari reached the performance of being court painter under five rulers: Alexanndru D. Ghica, Gheorghe Bibescu, Barbu Stirbei, Alexandru Ioan Cuza and Carol the First (for the last two of them becoming the official photografer). Szathmari is considered to be the first war photographer whose images are preserved. He earned fame with the album in which he had gathered, in the spring of 1854, the first front images and portraits of the Danube campaign’s commanders, campaign that started the Crimean War. For this album (with which he also attended the Paris International Exhibition, from 1855) he won numerous awards, including two golden medals - one from the Emperor Franz Joseph and one from Queen Victoria. Szathmari was a partisan of the Principalities Union, his lithography captured moments and personalities that made possible the fulfilment of this ideal. He was closed to Alexandru Ioan Cuza, so he fallowed the ruler in his travels to Istanbul (1860-1864). From Octomber the 16th, 1863 he is appointed by Al. I. Cuza as “painter and photographer of the Court.”
Szathmari created several outstanding photo albums, but the masterpiece of his life was the monumental work from 1869, entitled Romania. This album belonged to His Majesty Carol the First and gained images of the most significant religious establishments from Bucharest and the rest of Walachia. Although he was old and sick, he witnessed the War of Independence, this time taking photos only from the back of the front and sends them to various publications from the country and abroad. He took part at the Coronation of King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth (1881), this moment being the last one in his career as a photographer. He died in Bucharest, on 3th of July, 1887. (Dr. Oana Ilie)
The coat of arms of the Socialist Republic of Romania is centered.
Represents afforested mountains, over which the sun is arising. On the left side is an oil derrick. The coat of arms is surrounded by a wreath of wheat ears. On top of the coat of arms id a five-pointed star. On the bottom of the coat of arms, the wheat ears are wraped with a tricolor ribbon on which is written: "REPUBLICA SOCIALISTĂ ROMÂNIA".
Denominations in numerals are in all corners. In words lower, along whole length.
Revers:
The Palace of Culture (Romanian: Palatul Culturii) is an edifice located in Iaşi, Romania. The building served as Administrative Palace and then Palace of Justice until 1955, when its destination was changed again, being assigned to the four museums nowadays united under the name of Moldova National Museum Complex. Also, the building houses the Cultural Heritage Conservation-Restoration Center, the main branch of the Gheorghe Asachi Iași County Library and hosts various exhibitions and other events.
The Palace of Culture is listed in the National Register of Historic Monuments.
The construction, started in 1906, was partly built on the old ruins of the mediaeval Royal Court of Moldavia (1434), and partly on top of the foundations of the former neoclassical style palace, dated to the time of Prince Alexandru Moruzi (1806), rebuilt by Prince Mihail Sturdza and dismantled in 1904. It was from this latter building that the Palace inherited the legend of the 365 rooms, as many as the days within one year.
The Romanian architect I.D. Berindei was assigned to plan the building and he designed it in flamboyant neo-Gothic style. During World War I, the construction halted due to the limitation of resources. The monument was inaugurated on 11 October 1925 by King Ferdinand of Romania.
The Palace has 298 large rooms with a total area of over 36,000 m2 (390,000 sq ft), 92 windows in the front part of the building and another 36 inside the building.
Decoratively, the central hall shows a figurative mosaic including various representations of a gothic bestiary, concentrically arranged: two-headed eagles, dragons, griffons, lions. The hall is superposed by a glass ceiling room, where initially a greenhouse was arranged.
Moldova National Museum Complex of Iași hosts four museums located in the Palace of Culture: The Museum of Art, The Museum of History, The Museum of Ethnography, and The Museum of Science and Technology. The Museums also comprise their own stores and libraries, as well as halls for temporary exhibitions.
Art Museum:
The Art Museum has the largest art collection in Romania, with more than 8,000 paintings, out of which 1,000 belong to the national and universal patrimony. The gallery contains works by artists such as Caravaggio, Paolo Veronese, Pietro Liberi, Carlo Dolci, Salvator Rosa, Francesco Solimena, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Both, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Egbert van Heemskerk II, Nicolas Poussin, Philippe de Champaigne, Eustache Le Sueur, Guillaume Coustou, François Boucher, and many others.
Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia:
The Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia owns more than 11,000 objects depicting the Romanian advance through the ages. The museum, also, coordinates the Wine and Vineyard Museum in Hârlău.
Moldavia's History Museum:
The Moldavia's History Museum offers more than 35,000 objects from various fields: archaeology, numismatics, decorative art, ancient books, documents, etc. One of the oldest items, a 70,000-year-old mammoth skull, is from the Middle Palaeolithic Era. Among other items of significance are pottery from the Cucuteni culture, Dacian, Sarmatian, Gothic, and Roman artifacts, and armory and other items of the Middle Ages. Mihail Kogălniceanu Memorial Museum and Museum of the Union, in Iași, Al. I. Cuza Memorial Palace in Ruginoasa and the Archaeological Reserve of Cucuteni, are coordinated by Moldavia's History Museum.
Science and Technology Museum:
Ştefan Procopiu Science and Technology Museum (former The Polytechnical Museum) is home to "Energetics, “Sound Recording and Playback” (unique within Romania), "Telecommunications", "Mineralogy-Cristalography", "Computers" sections as well as "Poni-Cernătescu” Memorial Museum. 
Denominations in numerals are on the left side, in lower right corner and on the right side, vertically. In words lower.
Comments:
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