A big day show was organized, for the first time, on Saturday evening, December 24, in William Shakespeare Square in Craiova. Thousands of people gathered in the city center to enjoy the spectacle.
The Traian Demetrescu House of Culture invited the locals to a show with luminous aerial drones, with the theme of the winter holidays. The sky was lit up, for 20 minutes, by bells, Santas, Christmas trees, starlings and reindeer, being the first show of this kind in Craiova, but not in the country.
Spectators came from all over Oltenia to enjoy the Christmas Eve show.
A series of images (photo gallery) and videos (video) were published both by the mayor of Craiova, Lia Olguța Vasilescu, and on the social media pages of the City Hall and the Christmas Market.
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Show with light drones in the Craiova Christmas Market Photo Lia Olguța Vasilescu jpg
This year, the fair in Craiova ranked third in the ranking of “The most beautiful Christmas market in Europe”, carried out by the specialized website europeanbestdestinations.com, ahead of the one in Vienna and after Budapest (Hungary) and Gdańsk (Poland) , a fact that made the mayor of Bănie consider that in this way the Romanians “were avenged”, being ahead of Austria, with reference to the fact that this country refused Romania’s inclusion in Schengen.
The fair in Craiova climbed, in the same ranking, three steps compared to last year, when it was positioned in sixth place.
However, returning to this year’s top, after the fair in Craiova, the following positions were ranked: Vienna (Austria), Montbeliard (France), Essen (Germany), Valkenburg (Netherlands), Madeira (Portugal), Govone & Ast ( Italy) and Madrid (Spain).
Over 370,000 people from 179 countries voted for the 20 cities proposed by European Best Destinations, Craiova being the only city in Romania entered in the competition. More than 40,000 of the validly cast votes, most of them coming from countries such as the USA, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, were awarded to the Romanian fair.
This year, Craiova managed to amaze with over a million lights that spread over an area of one square kilometer, installed especially for the winter holidays, for which the municipality claims that it only paid 200,000 lei for the installation (the first invoice ), the merit of the investment going to the public lighting operator.