mathematician); all of them were adopted by Asachi. Şcoala Vasiliană and Albina Românească Soon after returning, Asachi was appointed caretaker of all Moldavian schools and Vel Agha. In March 1828, he succeeded in opening a multilingual upper school and gymnasium, connected to the Trei Ierarhi Church, named Şcoala Vasiliană or Gimnaziul Vasilian (in honor of the 17th-century prince Vasile Lupu, who had created the original education institution on that site). It was the first modern institution of its kind in Moldavia, and was soon supplemented by a college. Şcoala Vasiliană also continued the engineering course, taught by Gheorghe Filipescu, and had additional chairs in mathematics, architecture, applied mechanics and hydraulics; in 1834, it sent several of its alumni, including the architect Alexandru Costinescu, for further studies abroad. On 19 July 1827, a great fire in Iaşi's western quarter destroyed Asachi's lodging, as well as the vast majority of his possessions and manuscripts. Upon the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, Moldavia and Wallachia again came under Russian administration. During that interval, Asachi decided to expand his educational goals and popularize new ideas through the means of press institutions, and requested approval from the Russian consul in Iaşi, Matvey Minciaky, to have these set up. In April 1829, Russia endorsed his project for a magazine titled Albina Românească, which first saw print in July of the same year. The first periodical to be published in Moldavia, it ran its own printing press, known as Institutul Albinei and originally housed in the Trei Ierarhi area. Alongside its stated goal (which involved generating a literary language), Albina Românească hosted pieces on current events, scientific essays, as well as articles offering practical advice. Over the following decades, it oversaw the publishing of several other magazines, which were originally designed as supplements; among these, Alăuta Românească (1837–1838) and Foaea Sătească a Prinţipatului Moldovei (1839) were initiated by the younger activist Mihail Kogălniceanu, who, through his influential publication Dacia Literară, become a vocal critic of Asachi's political and cultural views. First and foremost, Kogălniceanu expressed his dissatisfaction over the fact that Albina Românească relied on publishing translations from foreign authors, instead of encouraging national specificity. In addition, Asachi also issued a large panel of related works, including a series of almanacs which ran between 1847 and 1870. Another magazine created by Asachi, the short-lived Spicuitorul Moldo-Român (1841–1842), was published in both Romanian and French, having