Bucharest: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The first document in the world that mentions Bucharest is a charter signed on the twentieth of September 1459 by Vlad the Impaler, and he signed it here, in the princely court whose foundations you can walk into. The quarter that grew around it was the merchants’ town, and it spent most of the twentieth century derelict — the restoration only began around 2008, which is why half the lanes are new paving and half are still broken. Two hours, flat, and the cellars are the point.
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A short history of Bucharest
The first written mention of Bucharest appears in a document of 1459 signed by Vlad III, the Wallachian prince known as 'the Impaler'. The city served as a seat of the princes of Wallachia, and from 1659 it was the permanent capital. After the union of Wallachia and Moldavia, Bucharest became the capital of Romania in 1862. Between the two world wars it was called 'Little Paris' because of its boulevards and French-style buildings. On 4 March 1977 a severe earthquake struck the city, and in the 1980s Ceaușescu demolished a large part of the old town to build the Palace of the Parliament, one of the largest buildings in the world. In December 1989 the revolution that brought down the communist regime broke out here.
The ten best sights in Bucharest
1Palace of the Parliament60 lei, book with a passport, and it is the heaviest building on earth
2Romanian Athenaeum20 lei to look, and it was paid for by public subscription
3National Museum of Art25 lei, in the former royal palace, and the Brâncuși room is small
4National History Museum25 lei, and a full-size cast of Trajan’s Column is inside it
5CEC PalaceThe glass dome from 1900, and it is a working bank
6Stavropoleos MonasteryFree, from 1724, and the carved stone porch is the thing
7Curtea Veche5 lei, the 15th-century princely court, and Vlad built part of it
8Patriarchal CathedralFree, from 1658, on a hill that was a vineyard
9Crețulescu ChurchFree, from 1722, and it survived the 1977 earthquake
10Russian ChurchFree, seven gold domes, and the Tsar paid for it in 1909
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Bucharest →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Bucharest:
Free walking tours in Bucharest
The court Vlad wrote from
The first document in the world that mentions Bucharest is a charter signed on the twentieth of September 1459 by Vlad the Impaler, and he signed it here, in the princely court whose foundations you can walk into. The quarter that grew around it was the merchants’ town, and it spent most of the twentieth century derelict — the restoration only began around 2008, which is why half the lanes are new paving and half are still broken. Two hours, flat, and the cellars are the point.
- Curtea Veche · The princely court of Wallachia, and the charter of 1459 that first names Bucharest was issued from it by Vlad the Impaler, who also built the stone walls you see. The palace above was abandoned after a fire and an earthquake in the 1790s and the city simply built over it; what is open today is the cellar level.
- Manuc’s Inn · An Armenian merchant called Emanuel Mârzaian — Manuc Bei — built this caravanserai in 1808 with rooms around a wooden gallery, and four years later the negotiations that ended the Russo-Turkish war were held inside it. The Treaty of Bucharest of 1812 was signed in a hotel that is still taking guests.
- Stavropoleos Monastery · A Greek monk built it in 1724 with an inn attached to pay for it; the inn and the cells were pulled down and only this small church survived. The carved stones lying in the courtyard were rescued one by one from churches the city demolished in the twentieth century, and the nuns keep the largest collection of Byzantine chant manuscripts in Romania.
- Strada Lipscani · The street is named after Leipzig. The merchants here sold goods brought back from the Leipzig fairs, so the main commercial lane of Bucharest carries the name of a German city, and the side streets are still named after the trades — furriers, saddlers, tinsmiths.
- Pasajul Macca-Villacrosse · A forked arcade under yellow glass, opened in 1891 where an old inn had stood, and it carries two names because two owners split it — the Macca family and a Catalan architect called Xavier Villacrosse who had married into Bucharest. The stock exchange sat in it until the war.
- Cărturești Carusel · The Chrissoveloni family built this as their bank in 1903, the state took it in 1948 and turned it into a shop, and then it stood empty for about twenty years with a tree growing inside. It reopened in 2015 as a bookshop with six floors around a white atrium, and going in costs nothing.
The street that made it Little Paris
Calea Victoriei was paved with oak logs in 1692 and it was the road the princes drove out on; by 1900 it had the banks, the palaces and the royal residence, and that stretch is where the phrase "Little Paris" came from. Then 1977 and the bulldozers took parts of it, so the walk is a line of French facades with Communist blocks shoved between them. Two and a half hours, and three of the six stops are museums you can skip or spend a day in.
- CEC Palace · Paul Gottereau, a French architect, finished it in 1900 for the state savings bank, and it went up on the site of the medieval Church of St John the Great, which was demolished for it. The glass and iron dome over the main hall is the oldest of its kind in the city, and the bank still works downstairs.
- National History Museum · This was the Post Office Palace, built in 1900, and inside it stands a full-size plaster cast of Trajan’s Column — all thirty metres of it, laid out in sections at eye level, so you can actually read the carvings of the Roman conquest of Dacia that in Rome are forty metres above your head.
- Crețulescu Church · Iordache Crețulescu and his wife Safta built it in 1722, and Safta was a daughter of Constantin Brâncoveanu — the prince the Ottomans executed in Istanbul in 1714 along with his four sons for refusing to convert. The brick is left bare on purpose, and the frescoes in the porch are the originals.
- Revolution Square · On the twenty-first of December 1989 Ceaușescu began a speech from the balcony on the north side, the crowd started shouting back, and the live broadcast cut out — the tape of his face at that moment is the most-watched piece of film in Romania. The next day he left from the roof of the same building by helicopter, and he was dead within a week.
- Romanian Athenaeum · It was paid for by public subscription under the slogan "Give a leu for the Athenaeum" — ordinary people bought it a brick at a time and it opened in 1888. The fresco running round the inside of the dome is seventy metres long and tells Romanian history in twenty-five scenes, and George Enescu conducted here at the age of seventeen.
- National Museum of Art · The building is the former royal palace, and in December 1989 it was raked by gunfire and hit by shells while the fighting went on in the square outside — about a thousand works were damaged and the restoration took a decade. The Romanian wing holds the altar panels from monasteries that no longer exist.
What was cleared, and what was left
In 1984 Ceaușescu ordered about seven square kilometres of old Bucharest demolished for a civic centre — some forty thousand people were moved out, nineteen churches went, and the hill the whole quarter stood on was cut down by several metres. At the eastern edge the bulldozers stopped, and the streets they never reached are still there, with two synagogues in them. Three hours, mostly on the new boulevard and then suddenly in the old city.
- Palace of the Parliament · It has 1,100 rooms and it is the heaviest building on earth — about four million tonnes of marble, steel and concrete, all of it Romanian by decree, while the shops outside were rationing bread. Ceaușescu was shot before it was finished, and parliament still uses only part of it; the rest is let out for conferences.
- Bulevardul Unirii · It was called the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism and it was measured against the Champs-Élysées on purpose — three and a half kilometres long and ninety-two metres wide, where the Paris avenue is seventy-one. The fountains down the middle were switched off for twenty-five years and only started running again in 2018.
- Piața Unirii · The Dâmbovița river runs under the square in a concrete channel. It used to flood the city every spring, so between 1880 and 1883 it was straightened, deepened and in places roofed over, and the old market and the Jewish quarter that stood along its banks went with the rebuilding.
- Choral Temple · Finished in 1857 as a close copy of the Leopoldstadt Temple in Vienna, which the Nazis burned down in 1938 — so the Bucharest building is now the better surviving record of what the Vienna one looked like. It was wrecked by the Iron Guard in 1941, repaired, and restored again in 2015.
- Great Synagogue · Built in 1845 by Polish Jews and hidden in a courtyard behind the blocks, which is probably why it is still standing — the demolition plans ran up to it and stopped. The whole interior was painted in trompe-l’œil arabesques in 1936, and it now holds a permanent exhibition on the Romanian Holocaust.
- Strada Mântuleasa · A street of low nineteenth-century houses with iron gates, two minutes from the boulevard and untouched by it. Mircea Eliade set a whole novella here — "On Mântuleasa Street", in which a retired schoolmaster is interrogated for weeks because the secret police cannot work out whether his stories are memories or inventions.
Getting to Bucharest and getting around
- Henri Coandă Airport · Train to Gara de Nord, 20 minutes, and bus 783 runs all night
- Gara de Nord · From 1872, and Brașov is two and a half hours away
- Autogara Filaret · The 1869 station building, and the oldest in the country
- Piața Unirii · Two metro lines cross here, and a ride is 3 lei
Cheap eats in Bucharest
Eight counters where Bucharest eats standing. The national street food is mici — short skinless sausages of minced beef and lamb, grilled over coal, eaten with mustard, a slice of bread and a beer, about four lei each and never on a plate. The other one is the covrig, a hot pretzel from a window, two lei, which is what the whole city has for breakfast on the way to work.
- Terasa Obor · About 4 lei a mic, and the beer is sold at the next window
- Obor Market · Open 7 to 8 every day, and bring cash
- Hala Traian · An 1872 iron hall, restored, and the cheese counters at the back
- Piața Amzei · Small, central, and the flower hall is next door
- Piața Matache · Two minutes from the station, and open till evening
- Regina Elisabeta pretzel windows · Covrigi hot from the oven, 2 to 4 lei, and a queue at eight
- Zexe Zahana · A main is about 50 lei, and booking is sensible
- Lacrimi și Sfinți · Village cooking, old recipes, and about 45 lei a main
Museums in Bucharest
- Village Museum · 30 lei, by Herăstrău, and three hours is not too much
- National History Museum · 25 lei, and the cast of Trajan’s Column is at eye level
- National Museum of Art · 25 lei, the old royal palace, and the Brâncuși room is small
- Peasant Museum · 20 lei, closed Mondays, and the shop is worth the visit
- Antipa Museum · 30 lei, natural history, and the Deltaic dioramas are 1908
- MNAC · 20 lei, inside a wing of the Parliament, and the roof terrace
- Palatul Șuțu · 20 lei, on University Square, and small enough for an hour
- Zambaccian Museum · 15 lei, a collector’s own villa, and there is a Cézanne in it
Holy places in Bucharest
- Patriarchal Cathedral · Free, on the hill above Piața Unirii, and quiet by ten
- Stavropoleos Monastery · Free, 1724, and the carved stone porch is the thing
- Antim Monastery · Free, behind the Parliament, and moved 25 metres in 1985
- Radu Vodă Monastery · Free, on a mound by the river, and the seminary is beside it
- Domnița Bălașa · Free, 1885, and named for a daughter of Brâncoveanu
- St Joseph’s Cathedral · Free, and the organ recitals are on Sunday evening
- Armenian Church · Free, 1915, and the quarter around it is still Armenian
- Choral Temple · Free, 1857, and a copy of a Vienna synagogue that burned
Parks and gardens in Bucharest
Bucharest has more green per resident than almost any capital in the region, and the reason is not planning: the parks are the old estates and the old rubbish tips, and one of them is a wetland that happened by accident. Every one of them is free.
- Văcărești Nature Park · Free, 183 hectares, and the east bank has the paths
- Herăstrău Park · Free, 187 hectares, boats in summer, and skates in winter
- Cișmigiu Gardens · Free, in the middle of town, and the lake has rowboats
- Carol Park · Free, built for the 1906 exhibition, and the hill is a climb
- Tineretului Park · Free, laid over a rubbish tip in the 1960s, and it works
- Botanical Garden · 15 lei, from 1860, and the glasshouses are the best part
- Kiseleff Park · Free, the oldest public promenade, and shaded end to end
- Lacul Morii · Free, the largest lake in the city, and it is man-made
Things to do in Bucharest with kids
- Antipa Museum · 30 lei, a whale skeleton, and the dioramas you walk into
- Village Museum · 30 lei, 300 real houses to run between, and workshops
- Urseanu Observatory · 10 lei, by Piața Victoriei, and the dome opens if it is clear
- Parcul Circului · Free, a lake with pedal boats, and the state circus beside it
- Therme București · From 80 lei, 20 minutes north, and a shuttle from Piața Presei
- Tineretului Park · Free, the biggest playgrounds in the city, and bike hire
- Herăstrău boats · About 40 lei for half an hour, and the pier is on the south
- Grădina Icoanei · Free, small, shaded, and the puppet theatre is beside it
Live music in Bucharest
- Arenele Romane · Open air, in Carol Park, and tickets from about 150 lei
- Arena Națională · 55,000 seats, the big stadium shows, and metro to Pipera
- Berăria H · The largest beer hall in Europe, and live music most nights
- Control Club · The indie room since 2010, and the courtyard in summer
- Expirat · Moved from the old town to Carol Park, and still the same crowd
- Sala Radio · The radio orchestra hall, and the best acoustics in the city
- Sala Palatului · Behind the Royal Palace, and the cheap seats are at the back
- National Opera · From 30 lei, which is the cheapest opera seat in Europe
Frequently asked questions about Bucharest
What is there to see in Bucharest?
The top sights in Bucharest are Palace of the Parliament, Romanian Athenaeum and National Museum of Art. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Bucharest?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Bucharest without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Bucharest?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Bucharest, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The court Vlad wrote from.
How do you get to Bucharest and get around?
The main ways are Henri Coandă Airport, Gara de Nord and Autogara Filaret. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Bucharest, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Bucharest that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Bucharest for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.