Bucharest: the back story

About Bucharest: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Bucharest Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Bucharest has reinvented itself again and again: princely town, Belle Époque capital, communist showpiece and, today, a fast-moving European city of tech, art and music. Here is the story behind what you see on its streets.

A princely town

Bucharest grew up on the banks of the Dâmbovița, among the trading routes of Wallachia. The city’s name first appears in a document of 1459 signed by Vlad III, the prince remembered as Vlad the Impaler, at the princely court whose ruins you can still see in the Old Town. Merchants, guilds and inns gathered around it, and the streets of the Old Town still carry their names: Lipscani for the traders from Leipzig, Șelari for the saddlers.

The Belle Époque capital

In the second half of the 19th century, after the union of Wallachia and Moldavia and independence, Bucharest became the capital of a young kingdom, and it built like one. Architects trained in France gave the city its banks, palaces and boulevards: the CEC Palace, the Romanian Athenaeum, the Macca-Villacrosse Passage and the grand houses along Calea Victoriei and Kiseleff Avenue. Cafés, theatres and salons made it one of the most elegant capitals of the region.

Bucharest has reinvented itself again and again, and it is still doing so.

The Palace of the Parliament

In the 1980s, a large part of the historic district south of the centre was cleared to make way for a vast new civic centre, crowned by the building now known as the Palace of the Parliament. Churches were moved on rails or demolished, and whole streets disappeared. The palace, still unfinished in 1989, is today one of the largest buildings in the world, and walking around it gives you a real sense of the scale of that project.

Bucharest today

Since 1989, Bucharest has changed fast. It has become a centre of tech and business, with new towers in the north, a thriving restaurant and specialty coffee scene, galleries and clubs, and a great tradition of classical music centred on the Athenaeum and the George Enescu Festival. Old villas are being restored, and the city’s parks and lakes fill up with people on summer evenings.

Our advice: walk Calea Victoriei from end to end to see the city’s history in a single street, from the Old Town to the Enescu Museum, then come back in the evening for a concert at the Athenaeum.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Bucharest: the back story before you go.