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
Sometimes, Bucharest hides its most interesting things in places you may pass twenty times without ever looking up. In an apartment on Lipscani Street, you can step into the living room of a bourgeois family from a century ago; in a house near Carol Park, you enter the world of a couple of artists a... Read more
The Dâmbovița crosses Bucharest with the disciplined air of a civil servant who has memorised his route. It enters from the west, passes neighbourhoods, universities, ministries and apartment blocks, then leaves the city towards the south-east, confined between concrete slabs and boulevards where tr... Read more
On Magheru Boulevard, buildings are rarely granted the privilege of anonymity. Some bear the name of a cinema, others that of a hotel, an institution, or a company that vanished long ago but left behind an urban label more durable than any illuminated sign. The Eva Building belongs to the category o... Read more
Behind the National Arena, among sports grounds, trees and paths where Bucharest residents casually walk their dogs, rises one of the strangest silhouettes in the city. A slender concrete cylinder, as tall as a substantial apartment block, is topped by a metal cantilever resembling the arm of a cran... Read more
Perhaps the best-known thoroughfare in the Romanian capital after Calea Victoriei, General Gheorghe Magheru Boulevard stretches from Piața Romană to the intersection with C.A. Rosetti Street. Although many people believe that it continues all the way to University Square, from the junction with C.A.... Read more
Bucharest hides spectacular sights just a few steps away from the routes people walk every day while staring at their phones. A façade appears behind a fence, a dome becomes the backdrop to a speeding taxi, a monumental staircase quietly exists between two glowing storefronts and a bicycle courier.... Read more
Bucharest has always been an urban experiment governed by chance and driven by Balkan passions. Anyone walking today along its crowded boulevards, past eclectic buildings, communist apartment blocks and glass insertions, might get the impression that the city was born from a series of fortunate coin... Read more
Without a doubt, Bucharest has a few streets that should be explored on foot, with your phone in your pocket and your eyes raised toward the façades. Charming Negustori Street belongs in that category. It lies between Hristo Botev Boulevard and the Calea Moșilor area, in an old, dense and mildly stu... Read more