Discover Bucharest

About Bucharest

Bucharest is one of Europe's most under-appreciated capitals — a city that's part Belle Époque Paris, part Stalinist Moscow, part contemporary EU boomtown, with a chaotic, fascinating energy quite unlike anywhere else on the continent. Pre-WWI, the city was known as 'Little Paris of the East' for its grand boulevards, ornate stucco apartment blocks, and cosmopolitan café culture; the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu spent the 1980s demolishing one-fifth of the historic centre to build a megalomaniacal civic centre, anchored by the staggering Palace of the Parliament — the heaviest, second-largest, and most expensive administrative building in the world (3,930 rooms, 700,000 m² of floor space, finished in marble and crystal). The eerie 50-minute guided tour is essential. Around the corner, the lively pedestrianised Old Town (Lipscani) has been the centre of the city's nightlife since the late 2000s. The brilliant Village Museum in Herastrau Park is an open-air collection of 18th- and 19th-century rural Romanian buildings; the Romanian Athenaeum (1888) is one of Europe's most beautiful concert halls. Don't miss the moving Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Memorial of Rebirth in Revolution Square, where the 1989 revolution that ended Ceauşescu's regime began.