In 1920, Martha resumed the restoration works guided by Rupolo, the old Venetian architec. In 1921, the young and refined architect George M. Cantacuzino, George Valentin Bibescu’s nephew, was charged to continue them. “In the summer of 1921 – he remembered -, I was restoring the Brancovan palace at Mogosoaia. With a group of craftsmen, skilful in brick carving and treatment, with a whole gypsy camp and two Greek stone hewers, I was trying to change the appearance of a tragic ruin à la Edgar Poe’s stories to the lofty princely dwelling. Little by little, the crumbled vaults were raised again, the deep wall cracks were refilled, the fallen stones were put back, and the entire palace emerged from the ground gathered at its bottom by the winds of time and oblivion.”
Constantin Argetoianu, who visited the palace on June 1, 1932, remembered: “Starting from the upright walls, Martha Bibescu achieved an architectural marvel: an outside marvel, an inside marvel, a marvel around – a marvel from the secret little Florentine garden, in which the rowan grows amid stone slabs along the beautiful and haughty rose, mishung on the vaults extending the old Brancovan kitchen, to the flowered terraces, whose steps are soaked by the foul waters of the lake, on which mirror surface large water lily leaves sprawl. Everything is harmony in this work without dissonances: no broken line, no empty space troubles the eye. Inside, every piece of furniture, each object obey the rhythm of high artistic concern reigning throughout.” The palace was inaugurated in June 1927; George Valentin Bibescu (who, on March 24, 1925 had donated the palace and estate to Martha Bibescu in presence of a Parisian notary), his wife and Rupolo, the Italian architect, participated in the event. However, the inner works, led by G.M. Cantacuzino, were completed during 1930-1935. In the reshaped rooms of the palace, Martha Bibescu ranged the most valuable art objects related to Brancoveanu, Bibescu, Mavrocordat, Pellaprat and Chimay families. “In this residence, unique in Wallachia and, probably, in the whole of Eastern Europe – Argetoianu noticed -, Princess Martha, whose soul so many strings vibrate and no less passions and traditions struggle in, knew to collect and match the memories of several worlds and display them in those grand rooms, so lenient in their proportions, that they could not reject anything.”
In the entrance hall there were: two candlesticks brought from Constantin Brancoveanu’s church at Doicesti (Damboviţa County), two Italian pictures (Beatrice and Jesus Christ) proceeded from Countess Marie de Montesquieu’s collection, the portrait of Princess Mariţica Vacarescu (the second wife of Ruling Prince Bibescu), painted by Carol Popp de Szathmáry, the portrait of Alexandru Mavrocordat the Exaporit /Secret Counsellor/ and that of Pierre-Paul [de] Riquet [de Caraman], the founder of Chimay family, of whom Martha Bibescu’s mother-in-law descended.
In the room leading to belvedere there was the portrait of Maria Leszczyñska, queen of France, Louis XV’s wife. Some objects in the small throne hall reminded of Gheorghe Bibescu’s reign: the throne (under a baldachin, the plush armchair with gilt woodwork) and the sceptre, three pictures representing the voivode and his first wife, Zoe Brancoveanu, two of his swords, as well as the mantle.
The palace dining room was decorated with Louis XV furniture, its walls being covered with four tapestries woven after Marchioness of Pompadour’s drawings. The most valuable pieces of the place were a pendulum originating from the castle of Versailles and two pictures representing Prince of Chimay and Pierre-Paul [de] Riquet. The decoration of the music hall remembered Voivode Constantin Brancoveanu’s family, a 50 sq.m. silk embroidery, made by Nora Steriadi in 1930-1932, interpreted the votive picture from Hurezi Monastery.
In the library, several paintings restored the imperial genealogy of the Bibescus. Emilie Pellaprat, the daughter of Napoleon I and George Valentin Bibescu’s grandmother, was painted by Guerin (1829). Three of Prince and Princess of Chimay’s portraits were brought from their castle, and two harps belonging to Empress Josephine and her daughter, Queen Hortense [of Holland], were retrieved from Napoleon’s palace at Malmaison. In one bedroom there were the portrait of Voivode Brancoveanu, brought from Sinai Mountain, and that of King Louis XIV as a child, proceeded from Duke of Berry’s collection
