On Oboga Street, in a workshop you only get to see if you call ahead, someone is still doing by hand something Bucharest, by and large, has forgotten how to do: an old book gets repaired thread by thread, not thrown out or scanned.The trade is called antique bookbinding and restoration, and the city... Read more
On March 11, 1928, the Bucharest press reported something that today would sound like a routine technical glitch: for almost three weeks, a large number of telephones across the capital had simply stopped ringing. Except it wasn't a glitch. It was, the papers said, revenge — from the young women run... Read more
"Doors closing." A phrase almost 700,000 Bucharest residents hear daily, year after year, without giving it much thought. Behind it is an odd story: the woman whose voice became, in effect, the sound signature of the Bucharest metro didn't know her voice was being used there at all.Isabela Neamțu w... Read more
Rahova, Ferentari, Obor, Colentina are the Bucharest neighborhoods where pawnshop counters have been a fixture for decades, though lately you'll also find them on central boulevards, next to pharmacies and currency exchange offices. The market has grown steadily, driven by high bank interest rates a... Read more
A historic building on Biserica Amzei Street, once home to a tailor shop, is about to begin a new chapter before undergoing restoration. Starting July 18, the property, located opposite the iconic La Mița Biciclista, will reopen as ALTLOC 1.6.1.8, a temporary cultural hub offering seven workspaces f... Read more
On Sfântul Ionică Street in Bucharest once stood a multi-story building with a sober, imposing façade, the kind of architecture that left no doubt about how seriously the institution inside took itself. A chronicler of the time noted, with a touch of irony, how luxurious the building looked for an i... Read more
In the block neighborhoods built during the 1970s, a playground usually meant a swing made from welded pipe, a slide with rusting rails, and a climbing frame built for durability rather than for children. The sand around it mixed with dirt within a season, and the paint chipped off in the first year... Read more
Over the past few months, a handful of new restaurants have opened in Bucharest that break the usual mold. What ties them together is the story behind each one: an old building, a chef with an international track record, a team that already knows how to build a successful venue. Merlin26 is one of t... Read more
In Constanța, an apartment listed for sale sits on the market for 78 days, on average, before finding a buyer. In Brașov, slightly less, 72. Bucharest, by contrast, is the only city that drops below the two-month mark, even though prices there run higher than the rest of the country on average. One... Read more
A Bucharest woman in 1850 gave birth at home, with the neighborhood midwife beside her, no alternative on the table. Hospitals existed, but there were few of them, reserved for serious cases — birth remained, for most women, a family matter rather than a medical procedure. Today, a few hundred meter... Read more