Weekend in Bucharest – worth to see?

Weekend in Bucharest – worth to see?

Bucharest was once called Little Paris (Micul Paris). After all, there were many elegant buildings in the same style. Its own Romanian Triumph Arch was installed in 1920. Narrow streets, malls, luxury houses and detached houses. There is even a river crossing the capital as a narrow strip. Why was Bucharest once called Little Paris, and now its name is irrelevant? It’s due to the fact that Romania has been for 42 years ruled by a dictator who invented his new city appearance projects and destroyed numerous historical architectural monuments to build new pompous ones.

At present, only some historic buildings survived. Little old center of Bucharest is preserved. We went for a walk there. Overall Bucharest survived two wars, long communist construction and earthquakes. So it’s not a big deal to imagine that just small percentage of the beauty survived.

Just a few streets in the pedestrian old center. Dining or other commercial facilities work in the first floor of all houses.

This is the main pedestrian street — Strada Lipscani. There is even such a modern facade, where well-known brand H&M is located.

Old buildings in very poor condition can be seen all over Bucharest. But here, in the old center, perhaps 95% of all buildings have been restored as of 2015.

There are no such attractions to pay entrance fee and go on tour in the old center. You can just walk along the streets and contemplate the facades of old buildings and peer into interesting details.

And there are so many restaurants that each of them chases another trying to best decorate its terrace to attract visitors.

To find the most interesting terrace in the old center – this may be also included into the ‘must-see’ list in Bucharest.

There is an interesting building in the main pedestrian street, where a three-storey library opened in early 2015. On the last floor there is a coffee shop where you can enjoy a cup of coffee and read a book you’ve just bought.

In addition to the old city center you can find several historical buildings that were not destroyed on the way of constructing something gorgeous in the Ceausescu style.

So Ceausescu. Who has not heard – he was the dictator with delusions of grandeur. He planned to rebuild the city as the one of huge buildings in eclectic style. He easily turned into dust historic buildings over 100 years old. Here is, for instance, the second largest building in the world! (after the Pentagon in the US). This giant was built on the corpses of tens of thousands of old houses of 18-19^th centuries.

Ceausescu Palace (although the Romanians are ashamed of this name) or the Houses of Parliament, was being built in 1983-1989 year. Ironically, Ceausescu never dwelt there with his wife; they even did not have time to officially open the palace.

Imagine a building 12 floors high (86 m height) and 8 floors underground (94 m!!!). Add the building length of 270 m with width of 240 m. Now you know the area of this giant that is easily visible from the outer space. There still are a number of long secret tunnels. Ceausescu was constructing this extensive luxury and other buildings at the time all Romanian people scarcely survived in poverty. Too much he wanted, the people rebelled and even his henchmen went against him. For 42 years did the dictator sucked all the juices out of the people, and one day (on Catholic Christmas Eve) he and his wife were sentenced to death and shot dead.

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Opposite the palace an enormous Unirii avenue (bulevardul Unirii) was built with fountains at full length, at the end of which there is another even wider fountain – Fountain lui Bucur.

   We just went a little closer to the palace, and didn’t enter it. First, everything was closed at such earliness. And second, we know well how communist interiors look. For those who want to go inside the entrance will cost 8-10 US dollars and the same price in addition for the camera. It’s not allowed to wander around 1,001 rooms individually, you must wait until a group gathers and the guide will lead it through several rooms and tell “interesting” stories. 

Then we went down a long avenue of fountains to another large fountain.

This giant is at Unirii Square, which is surrounded by roadway.

Ceausescu wanted to build a completely different Bucharest. Not all his plans came true and now large unfinished buildings can be found around the city.

If you set the aim to find and see the beauty of Bucharest, then, of course, you’ll manage to the see many beautiful and secluded corners, well-preserved historic buildings, interesting photogenic streets – everything that reminds Little Paris. Unfortunately, we didn’t come across these things.

We drove 5 km from the Palace of Parliament through traffic jams to see the Arc de Triomphe of Romania but, unfortunately, it’s on reconstruction completely hidden under scaffolding. Though, there are quite lovely planted streets near the attraction where you can see beautiful detached houses and other buildings.

From some angles Bucharest is a beautiful European city.

But in the majority we’ve seen it such as in the picture below. Continuous high constructions, mostly dilapidated. There are the whole buildings with new facades (facade insulation is made for the whole house and it is very often painted in one color)

Mostly gray and broken streets; transport as well desires to be in better state, people… and what people may be when they live in gray concrete in 40-degree heat. In general, Bucharest is the city worth visiting later, there is still much to be done to make it comfortable for everyone.

Here we visited a cool cafe in shopping center near our home, which left us fond memories of Bucharest. The capital is the capital and another region – Transylvania won over us, incredible beauty, which is unknown to the majority.

With love, RH.

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