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Home - City Guide - Bucharest - City Overview | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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City Overview Bucharest (Buchure?ti), located midway between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea in southeastern Romania, has been the epicentre of the country's upheavals. The stages of Romania's history are like vivid tattoos painstakingly etched across the city's surface, each telling a different chapter of the story, and visitors will be slowly hypnotised by the unfolding events as they discover Bucharest. Summer visits, however, should be avoided as temperatures soar, air conditioning is rare, and much of the city shuts down as students return home and locals head for the coast. The first mention of Bucharest is in a document from 1459 signed by Vlad Tepe?, then ruler of the first Romanian state of Wallachia. Known as 'Vlad the Impaler' - for impaling his enemies on huge stakes - he became the inspiration for the vampire Count Dracula in the West. Yet among his countrymen he is something of a folk hero, renowned for standing up to the Turks and Wallachia's noble families. The ruins of his palace can still be seen in central Bucharest. For the next 300 years, the city served as a mere stopping point on the trade route between central Europe and the Balkans, its character defined by its Turkish overlords - an influence that can be seen today in the architecture, for example Melic House on Strada Spatarului and the Mosque on Strada Constantin Manescu. But, in 1862, as the capital of a unified Romania, Bucharest began to forge a different identity. French architects were called in to remake it in the image of Paris. Long, tree-lined boulevards were built, with impressive neo-classical architecture, and Bucharest gained the title 'Paris of the East'. This golden era lasted until World War II and produced some of Europe's most beautiful residences for the elite, although the majority of Bucharest's inhabitants languished in back-street slums off the grand boulevards. However, this 'romantic' chapter came to a close when Communism took root in 1946. Areas bombed by the Allies during World War II were replaced by stolid apartment blocks, inaugurating a Socialist Realism style of architecture that climaxed after Nicolae Ceau?escu became President of Romania's Communist Party in 1965. Destroying many historic buildings, including 26 churches, Ceau?escu replaced them with massive concrete apartment and office blocks he called the Centru Civic. Yet due to the next turning of the political tide - Ceau?escu's fall in the 1989 revolution - they were never completed. The effect is as if some megalomaniacal child had got hold of a bulldozer and razed huge swathes of history to erect a crude vision of a Communist city, only to abandon it when he got tired of the game. Much of it remains eerily unfinished. Yet this architectural debacle gives an added dimension to the city - its sheer size and scale never ceasing to impress. Bucharest is now undergoing another transformation with a more liberal government. Historic buildings and parks are being restored, fashionable shops are opening and new restaurants, trendy bars and internet cafÉs are popping up all over. As chapters end and new ones begin at an increasing pace, Bucharest keeps the visitor in a constant state of suspense, wondering what will happen next. |
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