At 12 Calea Victoriei, Bucharest puts on one of its most solemn faces. Ten Doric columns, steps grand enough to usher in an entire era, two corner pavilions, and the stern air of an institution that makes visitors discreetly straighten their ties. Today, the building houses the National History Muse... Read more
Old Bucharest hides in plain sight. Just pay attention. Beneath the dome of the CEC Palace, beneath the columns of the National Museum of Romanian History, or beneath the marble of the National Bank lie, layer upon layer, the foundations of a merchant city that smelled of wet wood, coffee, leather,... Read more
The trouble with the Dudești neighborhood is that everyone recognizes the name, but very few people would draw the same outline on a map. For some, it begins at Hala Traian; for others, at the Vitan Post Office; while for a driver stuck at the Dristor intersection, it probably means that stretch of... Read more
The red dot! An emblem with which Bucharest has maintained a relationship that could best be described as… “complicated.” Bucharest residents see the dot, frown for a second, and then continue on their way to the ground-floor café, where an espresso costs about as much as a toy structural assessment... Read more
In days gone by, you could read old Bucharest through its shop signs, its smells and, above all, the names of its streets. One lane advertised beads, another saddles, another furs, while Lipscani promised goods arriving from Central Europe. Trade drew its own map, with a clarity that contemporary ur... Read more
Interwar Bucharest had a complicated relationship with novelty. It admired it in magazines, discussed it over coffee, then started muttering when novelty moved onto the next street and appeared in the form of a white house with a roof terrace and long windows. Until then, a respectable home was expe... Read more
The Romanian Athenaeum delights everyone in central Bucharest, exuding the quiet confidence of a building that knows perfectly well it is the star of the city. Its dome, iconic columns, and front garden have long since become part of the capital’s official scenery, alongside pigeons, traffic jams, a... Read more
Some places tell the story of a country without uttering a single solemn phrase. Henri Coandă International Airport in Otopeni belongs to this category. You hurry through it, boarding pass clutched between your fingers and your mind already on your holiday, business trip or return home, while the bu... Read more
On a simple stroll through IOR Park—officially Alexandru Ioan Cuza Park, although everyone knows it by the acronym of the nearby Romanian Optical Enterprise—you will see mothers pushing prams, pensioners feeding ducks and young people taking Instagram photos beside the lake. The scenery seems so nat... Read more
Henrik Ibsen remains one of those playwrights who seem contemporary regardless of the century. He wrote about people living in late nineteenth-century Norway, about houses with imposing drawing rooms, carefully polished reputations, and families that swept their secrets under the carpet with a disci... Read more