Tirgu Jiu is a small city about sixty kilometers northeast of Drobeta. The Monkey stopped off there to see some of the public works by Tirgu Jiu's most famous son, sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Between walks to see the sculptures, the Monkey paused for a photo by the city's rather miniscule cathedral. It was the Monkey's first run-in with a Romanian painted church, but not his last: in Horezu, where he went next, he found even more impressive specimens.

Constantin Brancusi was born near Tirgu Jiu, educated as an artist in Bucharest, and made his name in Paris in the 1900s. He is credited with revolutionizing sculpture, giving it a modern, abstract voice. In the 1920s, Brancusi also taught another modern sculptor, the Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi.

Throughout his career Brancusi revisited the theme of a so-called Endless Column, a repeating geometric pattern. Here, the Monkey visits what must be the tallest rendition of the Endless Column, in Tirgu Jiu. The Monkey requests that any comments about the column not being endless be kept to oneself.

In Tirgu Jiu, where he grew up, Brancusi created the Avenue of the Seats as part of a memorial for the Romanian dead of World War I. When the Monkey visited in 2002, the works were being restored. But that didn't stop him from enjoying the riverside park in which the sculptures reside.

Brancusi's Table of Silence (also being restored) is part of the same war memorial that includes the Avenue of the Seats and another work, the Gate of the Kiss (under so much scaffolding that the Monkey didn't bother stopping for a photo). The Endless Column is almost two kilometers away, but Brancusi included it as part of the memorial. Always concerned with spatial relations, it is thought that he intended the distance (and in human terms the walking time) between the works to signify the human lifespan—apropos indeed in a war memorial.

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