Today’s Bucharest seems built from hurried asphalt, irritable concrete, and cafés that appear overnight with a minimalist logo and European-city prices. But old Bucharest, the one described by Constantin C. Giurescu in The History of Bucharest, breathed in an entirely different way. Before the city became the capital of blocked trams, wide boulevards, and neighborhoods raised in a rush, it was surrounded by vineyards. Many vineyards. So many that Giurescu speaks of a true green crown around the city, with plantations that entered deep into the mahallas and reached almost as far as the Princely Court. Much like Vienna, for instance, which — whether you knew it or not — still produces wine today from its own vineyards.

Bucharest was an agricultural, boyar, monastic, festive city, highly attentive to every demijohn of wine.

The city with vineyards at its gate and in the middle of the mahalla

Constantin C. Giurescu clearly shows that, in former times, old Bucharest was surrounded by vineyards. They climbed the sloping edges of the plain toward the Dâmbovița meadow, stretched across the plain itself, and descended toward the gentler banks of the Colentina. Bucharest therefore had a geography of the vine, and the city’s hills carried this economic and social memory with a seriousness that today can still be felt only in street names.

The historian uses documents from the 16th–18th centuries to trace these plantations. The first documentary mention he invokes appears on October 21, 1585, when Prince Mihnea dedicated the monastery at Podul Colentinei to the Xiropotamou Monastery on Mount Athos, together with its estates, mills, orchards, fruit trees, and vineyards on the hill of Bucharest. The formula seems dry, chancery-like, but behind it one sees a city already functioning as an economic organism closely tied to the land.

These vineyards had roots older than the surviving documents. The historian links them to the millennia-old tradition of viticulture on Romanian territory, even recalling the ancient episode attributed to Burebista concerning the measures taken to limit the excesses caused by wine. The reference to Burebista circulates in Romanian historical and viticultural literature, including modern studies on the tradition of wine on the territory of Romania.

Dealul Bucureștilor, where wine served as a map

One of the key spaces is Dealul Bucureștilor. From the unpublished document dated January 21, 1701, cited by the historian, we learn about the sale of several vineyard strips near the Giurgiu road. This area is identified with the slope at Filaret, suggesting an extension westward as far as Dealul Lupeștilor, today’s Dealul Spirii, and eastward to Dealul Măicăneștilor, near the present-day Bellu Cemetery.

In this old geography, today’s city names gain a different weight. Șoseaua Viilor preserves, with almost ironic discretion, the memory of those plantations. A street many people now cross on their way to the tram or home was, in the logic of the old city, part of a productive landscape, with vines, wine cellars, people harvesting, and owners calculating tithes. Contemporary urban sources dedicated to Bucharest’s history confirm the direct link between the name Șoseaua Viilor and the old plantations in the area.

Giurescu also mentions Dealul Văcăreștilor, Dealul Moldovenilor, Dealul Lupeștilor, and Dealul Patriarhiei. Each appears in documents with vineyards, donations, sales, boundaries, and obligations. Here, Bucharest seems closer to a vineyard administered by ledger than to a future Balkan capital where everyone argues over parking spaces.

Princes, boyars, and monasteries, the great owners of the vineyard

In old Bucharest, the vineyard meant property, prestige, and income. The ruler had vineyards close to the Princely Court, including in the old area of Podul Vergului and near Sfântul Gheorghe Vechi. There are documents from 1593 and 1632 showing the existence of the princely vineyard in this central part of the city. Later, during the time of Constantin Brâncoveanu, documents also mention the princely vineyards at Văcărești.

The boyars followed the same pattern. Ban Nicolae Brâncoveanu owned a vineyard of more than nine hectares and an orchard in the Sfântul Elefterie mahalla. Marghiolița Arionoaia remained linked, through her name, to the area where Strada Arionoaiei exists today. The Crețulești family had vineyards in the Fântâna Boului mahalla, and the Ghica family near their settlement at Tei. In 1804, the famous Manuc, then a cupbearer, bought two vineyards in Dealul Bucureștilor. Manuc Bei, known especially through the inn built at the beginning of the 19th century, was a merchant, diplomat, and a highly influential figure in the Bucharest of his time.

Monasteries played a huge role in this economy of wine. Radu-Vodă, Mihai-Vodă, Plumbuita, Tuturor Sfinților, the Metropolitan Church, and churches such as Slobozia appear as owners of vineyards or beneficiaries of income from the wine tithe. Radu-Vodă Monastery, founded in the 16th century, had important estates and economic interests, and its position on the right bank of the Dâmbovița connected it directly to the old areas of the city.

The wine tithe, the tax that could spoil the good mood

One of the most flavorful episodes concerns the vinărici, meaning the tithe on wine. There was a princely wine tithe, owed to the voivode, and a boyar wine tithe, owed to the owner of the land. In 1650, Matei Basarab confirmed Radu-Vodă Monastery’s right to collect the wine tithe from the vineyards on Dealul Lupeștilor. At first, the proportion was one vadră for every fifteen vedre; later, it was reduced to one vadră out of twenty.

Giurescu also recounts the conflict between the cavalrymen from Dealul Lupeștilor and the monastery. The people delayed payment, and the ruler reacted in a tone that modern administration would envy for its clarity and lack of ceremony. Matei Basarab directly threatened those who considered themselves stronger than the princely command. The scene has all the brutal charm of the 17th century: a little economy, a little authority, plenty of wine, and a dose of voivodal intimidation.

The vineyard was therefore a serious fiscal matter. Wine meant income, and income had to be defended. However pastoral the story of Bucharest’s vineyards may sound, behind it stood a network of obligations, privileges, and sanctions. The harvest could be cheerful, but the ledger remained the ledger.

The Austrian maps and the city with 139 vineyards counted between bridges

At the end of the 18th century, the image of Bucharest’s vineyards becomes very clear through the Austrian plans of the city, drawn up by the officers Ernst and Purcel. Purcel’s plan from 1790–1791 shows an extensive vineyard at the edge of the capital, especially in the southwest, but also numerous vineyards inside the city.

The figure that leaps from the page is spectacular: there were no fewer than 74 vineyards between Podul Mogoșoaiei and Podul Târgului de Afară, meaning, in broad terms today, between Calea Victoriei and Calea Moșilor. Another 65 vineyards appeared between Podul Mogoșoaiei and the Dâmbovița. On and around Dealul Mitropoliei, 11 vineyards were marked. Central Bucharest in 1791 therefore had a viticultural density that would today make any real-estate developer shed a discreet tear over a cadastral file.

The historical plans of Bucharest from the 18th–19th centuries, including the Borroczyn plan from 1844–1846, remain essential tools for understanding the old city. The “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism lists, in its documentation, the historical plans of Bucharest, among them the Borroczyn plan, at a scale of 1:10000.

The harvest, the must, and the small autumn republic

One of the most vivid pages is the description of the grape harvest. During harvest time, vineyard owners moved from the city to the wine cellars for a week or two. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, and fiddlers came along. Pastrami was grilled, sweet or slightly sharp must was drunk, poured into clay mugs. Harvesters, must-makers, and those working the wine presses gathered in the evening for conversation, dancing, and chatter.

The scenes have a special charm because they place Bucharest in a light rarely associated with it. The capital appears as a city with agricultural rhythms, with hand-worked autumns and cellar sociability. Work, celebration, hierarchy, and small local vanities mingled there. A boyar with a large vineyard could show, in a single harvest day, how much land he owned, how many people sought him out, and how well he knew how to organize merriment.

It was a world in which the vineyard functioned both as an economic space and as a social stage. Must served as the local press, the fiddler provided the soundtrack, and the evening conversations could easily have competed with any Bucharest talk show, with the advantage of proper pastrami beside the clay cup.

Phylloxera and the end of a green world

In the second half of the 19th century, the number of Bucharest vineyards declined. Giurescu explains the process through the expansion of construction, the emergence of neighborhoods, the building of factories, and then the heavy blow caused by phylloxera. The insect severely affected European and Romanian viticulture toward the end of the 19th century, forcing winegrowers to switch to grafting onto American rootstock, a costly and difficult solution for many owners.

For Bucharest, the effect was double. The city was growing, while the vineyard required money, labor, and new treatments. Many plots of land were left fallow, then swallowed by urbanization. In 1906, Frédéric Damé still found a few vineyards on the outskirts, which is why several photographs of the grape harvest and of a wine cellar have survived. But the direction was already clear: the old urban vineyard was retreating, and the city was entering another age.

The vineyard of the Central Seminary, which still existed between the two world wars, also disappeared. What remained were the toponyms: Șoseaua Viilor, Drumul Viilor, Drumul între Vii, Ziduri între Vii, Strada Vișoarei, Strada Viței, Strada Strugurilor. Bucharest lost its vineyard, but kept a few labels stuck to the map, like traces of must on an old tablecloth.

The vineyard strip, the small unit in a large economy

I noticed one very valuable technical observation: the usual unit of measurement in old Bucharest’s vineyard economy was the răzor, or vineyard strip. It had a known width, while its length followed the hill, which is why documents often indicated the number of strips without specifying the exact surface area.

This information says a great deal about Bucharest’s old economy. The city functioned with standard units, locally accepted practices, and reference points people understood through use. In Giurescu’s analysis, the răzor sits alongside the delniță, jirebie, mill site, apiary site, or shop site. Old Bucharest was measured through experience, boundary, neighborhood, and custom.

Seen this way, the history of the vineyards becomes a history of the city itself. A Bucharest in which the land had memory, the mahallas carried the scent of leaves and must, and power could be seen in vineyards, monasteries, taxes, and deeds of donation. Today, when the name “Viilor” seems like a simple traffic landmark, it is worth remembering that one of the city’s most fertile stories is hidden there. A capital that, before becoming fully urban, was, among other things, an immense vineyard.

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