With Google Maps you can get anywhere very quickly. Virtual. See the whole picture from above, from almost 20 metres away, if the area is of interest. That’s how, by playing with your mouse wheel, you can find out that Lake Morii is of interest and especially the island it hosts is worth a closer look. On the surface, however, the island of Lake Morii is a promise buried in rubbish.
On the map it looks like little, but once there, the jetty that serves as the road to the island seems to get longer with every step. It’s almost three and a half kilometres from tram stop 41 – Ciurel Bridge.

Lake Morii is the largest lake in Bucharest, covering 246 hectares. Few know the true history of this lake and how it was built, but especially the curse it bears. When it was built, the communist regime literally ran over corpses because they had to demolish one of the most beautiful churches in Bucharest, St. Nicholas, and dismantle an entire cemetery.

The idea of building Lake Morii was as practical as it could be, the idea was to protect the capital from flooding. To achieve their goal, the builders had to force people to exhume thousands of corpses and move them to the Giulești Sârbi Cemetery. Thus, the Crângași Cemetery was to disappear to make way for a lake.

The communist regime had ordered that all the dead be moved by a fixed date. When the deadline passed, bulldozers drove over what was left of the cemetery. Sadly, many graves were turned over, creating a curse psychosis. Bones mixed in with the turned over earth were everywhere, and some took what they could get their hands on, not even knowing if the bones were those of loved ones or not. What’s more, the church dedicated to St Nicholas was demolished on the very day of Saints Constantine and Helen.