Romanian Crown Custodian and Prince Radu visit AGERPRES;Crown Custodian Margareta: Fascinating!Work and history

The Romanian Crown Custodian, Margareta, expressed appreciation for "the work and history" of the AGERPRES National News Agency during a visit she paid together with Prince Radu on Tuesday at AGERPRES headquarters.

"Fascinating. Both the work and the history there. It is something that shows us, at present, that we can respect everything that happened in our country and everything that still needs to be done, actually. There is a lot of history there. And I don't know how we could see them, because we have a memory that is not accurate. But here it is accurate, there are photographs, articles, all sorts of things. It is fascinating," the Crown Custodian said.

In his turn, AGERPRES National News Agency Director General Alexandru Giboi stated that for the activity of AGERPRES, the Royal Family represents "an important landmark" and the relation between the Royal House and the National News Agency was capitalised on through the visit of the Custodian of the Romanian Crown and Prince Radu.

"It is highly important that throughout the agency's history we have succeeded to be close to Romania's most important personalities, to the greatest events our country has been through and the Royal House, the Royal Family, they are practically a landmark for the agency's activity. So yes, we can say we were close and present (..) in the life of the Royal House, something that is visible in our archive's photos. (...) We showed the Royal Family a photo with King Mihai's playroom. It is proof that the agency did not miss anything important in the country's life," Alexandru Giboi said.

He mentioned that AGERPRES aims to reach "as highly as possible", the institution currently going through "the stage of technological development."

"As an example, in the photo album that we have prepared for the Centenary, there are several special photos that can be viewed with the help of an augmented reality app, which helps the viewer to discover more about that photograph. It is important for us to be ahead of our times in a way with regard to the development of our area, that of mass-media," Alexandru Giboi added.

The Royal couple visited the Home News Desk where they received information on how the press materials are written and edited.

The Custodian of the Romanian Crown and Prince Radu went afterwards to the AGERPRES photo archive containing 4.5 million photos of which approximately 160,000 are digitalised. Here, Her Majesty Princess Margareta expressed interest for photo documents of the 40's. Moreover, the two guests witnessed the digitalisation process of a photograph representing King Mihai's playroom.

The royal couple's visit continued with the Video Department and the new AGERPRES studio, where the two watched the trailer of the AGERPRES documentary dedicated to the Centennial - "The Great Union: Romania 100 Years On," which will premier on February 22.

At the end of the visit, the guests were presented with a photo album depicting images from the life of the royal couple.

"It is a very nice surprise. An album especially made by AGERPRES with the two of us. It is a love story: the prince and I," the Crown Custodian, Margareta stated and Prince Radu agreed that the gift is one "from the heart." AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Popescu, editor: Catalin Alexandru; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Rodica State)