This “jewel” of the city is left to posterity by Constantin Poroineanu in his birth certificate being recorded 1908 and has remained for years the most important objective of landscape architecture in the former county of Romanati the current county Olt and one of the most beautiful across the country.
Made by french landscape architects Pinard and Redont “The park of culture and rest” is patterned after Cismigiu Park in Bucharest, executed also on the plans of the french architects. Is located in the West-Northwest side of the city, between two old and popular neighborhoods, Bold and Protoseni, near the administrative center.
It covers an area of 25.5 ha, of which about 16 ha represents vegetation, the remaining ha being full of alleys and monuments of art, football stadium and handball courts, a recreational lake with an island arranged along the river Gologan and other urban amenities. Land configuration influenced the selection of species of woody plants and arrangement of vegetation and floodplain soil with a high ground water has an important role in the life of this true oasis of greenery. The relief was modeled inspirational, offering to the park naturalness, depth and variation, becoming an environment of true wealth of plant species from which stands out: spruce, Himalayan pine, black pine, cypress swamp, Virginia juniper , Thuja, tree of life, Mahora (originally from North America), censer (China). “Stars” of the park, true rarities plant are pagodas tree (Ginkgo biloba), having the same age as the park, swamp cypresses (Taxodium distichum), gray oak pyramid shaped (Quercus pedun-culiflora variety piramidalis), Tree of Life (Thuja orientalis ), black pine (Pinus nigra). A real axis of the park, starting at the monument of poet Mihai Eminescu and stopping near Lake Obogeanu is Poplars Alley, 1200 meters long, made in 1913. The four parallel rows of poplars, almost century-old, with dizzlying heights, invite the one who came to rest, to go through reciting or humming the poem „Pe lângă plopii fără soţ“ belonging to the poet to whom the entrance to the park alley was dedicated to. Here also, shared their thoughts as men of letters, during long walks in the evening, two poets friends, Haralamb Lecca and George Coşbuc, who arrived in Caracal at the invitation of professor Anton Eliade. In 1925, deputy of former county Romanaţi, I.D. Ianculescu take the initiative of molding in bronz a bust of Constantine Poroineanu, because until then, as we read in the newspaper „Romanaţul“, no.17 from 5th April 1915, the leaders of the city, persons with „crooked conception “ and „small souls“ can not find the decency to lift „a great monument“ to the man who left his entire fortune (three million lei)to Caracal city, “prompted by the love which always wore for the sons of Romanaţi, where for many years was their representative in Country Council.” (The Testament of Constantin Poroineanu).
The socle with the bronze bust of the “great philanthropist and good man” was carried up in 1928 on the site where currently is the monument “Evocation 1848”. After 1945 the bust was destroyed, being rebuilt by representatives of the municipality in 2008 and located on the south side of the main entrance of the park.
