The article presents the image of Chisinau after the devastation of July 1941, when its heritage buildings in the center were destroyed, as represented in the reports of romanian writers Virgil Gheorghiu, Laurențiu Fulga and Gala Galaction. All three knew the city well from the interwar period, the first two being graduated of the Military High School “King Ferdinand I” in Chisinau, and Gala Galaction being a professor at the Faculty of Theology in Chisinau for 14 years (until June 1940).They found Chisinau like a hole under the smokescreens, in piles of rubble and debris, piles of ash and coal. Writers lament the state of the city buried in piles of ash and collapsed walls, comparing it to what it once was. Military correspondent Virgil Gheorghiu stopped near Chisinau on July 17. The broken, smoky silhouettes of the houses looming on the horizon terrified him even if he was accustomed to war landscapes. Laurenţiu Fulga compared the city to a „buried fortress”, whose dominant image was that of „desolation and loneliness”. A report by the architects and engineers after the time lists the losses that made up the city’s heritage. They perished, being thrown into the air, the Old Metropolis, the National Bank, the Commercial Bank, the Bank of Bessarabia, the Chamber of Commerce, the Military High School, all hotels and printing houses, the waterworks, the radio station, the tram factory and depot, the State Printing House, the Police Inspectorate, the Prefecture, the barracks, the beer, oil, soap and tobacco factories etc. Although the disaster caused for Gala Galaction endless suffering, he was confident in the future of the city that would „be reborn from its ashes” like the Phoenix bird.