Bucharest, a city built in overlapping layers of history, hides within its urban fabric streets that have survived for centuries. The question “what is the oldest street in the capital?” does not have a single answer, but historians agree on a few arteries that take us back to the city’s earliest days.

From lanes to streets

The first roads of Bucharest looked nothing like the streets we know today. They were dirt lanes, beaten down by carts and merchants’ footsteps. Medieval documents from the 15th century already mention trade routes linking the market town of Bucharest with surrounding villages and fairs.

The oldest documented artery

Research shows that Ulița Mare – today’s Calea Moșilor – is among the oldest streets in the city. It connected the Princely Court with Târgul Moșilor (the “Fair of the Elders”) and further on with the road to Moldavia, being heavily used from as early as the 15th–16th centuries. Unsurprisingly, inns, shops, and merchants’ houses quickly lined the route.

At the same time, another street of remarkable age is Ulița cea Mare a Târgului de Jos, which largely corresponds to today’s Lipscani Street. In the 17th century, this was the commercial heart of Bucharest, its name deriving from the traders who brought fabrics from Leipzig (known as Lipsca).

Other historic roads

• Calea Șerban Vodă, a princely road linking Bucharest to Giurgiu, is mentioned as early as the 16th century.
• Calea Victoriei, inaugurated in 1692 under Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu as the “Mogoșoaia Bridge,” is more than 300 years old and remains one of the capital’s most important historic avenues.

The historians’ consensus

While several streets could claim the title of “oldest,” specialists generally place Calea Moșilor and Lipscani at the top, as the first true urban arteries of Bucharest. They did not emerge from urban planning but from the commercial and social needs of the medieval town.

Today, walking these streets—whether among modern blocks, interwar architecture, or shops—you are treading the same paths that people have used for centuries. In their own way, they preserve the memory of a Bucharest born at a crossroads of trade and history.