Having a population of 2.5 million people, spread over an area of 228 square kilometers, the city of Bucharest is one of the largest and most populated European capitals.
Forced industrialization imposed by the communist dictatorship on Romania, after the Second World War, led to accelerated demographic development and geographic expansion of the countryΓÇÖs capital city.
The demographic development and geographic extension of Bucharest were accelerated after the Second World War, when Romania, having a predominantly agricultural economy, was led by the communist dictatorship on the way of forced industrialization.
Bucharest has an ancient history, its territory having been inhabited even since the Bronze Age. However, the first written attestation of the existence of the city dates back only to 1459, from the time of Vlad the Impaler rule.
The geographic position of the city that had never been provided with stone fortifications during the medieval age, developing on the flat wetland of the Baragan Plain, favoured invasions, especially those of the Turks.
Beginning with the first half of the XVI century, after the princeΓÇÖs (voivodeΓÇÖs) court and the episcopal cathedral had been raised by voivode Mircea the Shepherd, Bucharest became the capital of Wallachia. From those times to the Independence War in 1877, the cityΓÇÿs history lay under the sign of Ottoman domination. The narrow streets still existing in old districts of Bucharest are proof of that oriental influence.
Becoming the capital of Romania in 1862, after the union of Moldavia and Wallachia Principalities, Bucharest was to enjoy the French luxury and a special urban animation. Around the royal palace, in the center of the city, after a series of edifices built by French architects, the first specific Romanian buildings appear, built by local architects in the neo-Romanian style. New currents will find their places in the cityΓÇÖs urban landscape.
Some highly significant facts in the history of the city attest to the fact that Bucharest has always been one of the most cosmopolitan capitals in Europe. Thus, as early as 1694, the first higher education institution in Wallachia, the PrinceΓÇÖs Academy at St. SavaΓÇÖs, was founded; in 1894, the electric tramways connecting Cotroceni to Obor were among the first in service in Europe; in 1936, when sociologist Dimitrie Gusti founded the Village Museum, this was one of the first ethnographic museums in the world; and the first Romanian movie studio (at Buftea), founded in 1950, was considered one of the largest and best-equipped studios in South-Eastern Europe.
Amazing by its impressive number of churches and monasteries, Bucharest was early receptive to western culture, being, by the level of its inhabitantsΓÇÖ civilization more than by its urban aspect, closer to the West.
The cityΓÇÖs essential quality is the abundance of vegetation that covers, in the form of parks and green areas, approximately 20% of its area. Its denomination, "the garden city", is due both to large parks, such as Herastrau, that extends by a wonderful open air ethnographic museum, or as Cismigiu, with its tree flanked alleys, and numerous residential districts with mansions that have kept small private gardens. Around Bucharest, the large Baneasa, Snagov, Cernica forests shelter some old monasteries.
