5 Days in Bucharest

The Palace of the Parliament is the reason many people come to Bucharest, and it's even bigger than you expect: one of the heaviest buildings in the world, with more than 1,000 rooms, most of them unused. Ceaușescu called it the House of the People and started it in 1984 after clearing the Uranus district and the streets around it, churches and monasteries included; some 40,000 people lost their homes to the new civic center. He was shot in 1989 before it was finished, and Romania debated tearing it down before giving it to the parliament.

The guided tour walks you through marble halls, crystal chandeliers, a staircase that, guides like to tell you, was rebuilt several times because Ceaușescu didn't like his own steps, and out onto the balcony over Bulevardul Unirii. Everything was made in Romania, from the marble to the carpets, and it was built while the country queued for bread. Both things are true, and the tour doesn't hide either.

On the way, look for the Mihai Vodă church on Strada Sapienței, hidden behind apartment blocks: in 1985 the engineer Eugeniu Iordăchescu moved it 285 meters on rails to save it from the bulldozers, one of several churches saved that way. Right behind the palace rises its rival, the People's Salvation Cathedral, the largest Orthodox church in the world by most measures, with a central tower 127 meters high. It was fully consecrated in October 2025, fifteen years after building began, and it's still argued about: a national symbol to some, an expensive monument next to a dictator's palace to others. Inside, the mosaics are still going up. Dress modestly.

Walk east along the boulevard, where Ceaușescu's Centrul Civic apartment blocks hide what's behind them, and climb the small hill to the Patriarchal Cathedral, built in the 1650s, the seat of the metropolitans of Wallachia since 1668 and of the Patriarch since 1925. It's small, old and busy with people lighting candles, one of the few corners the bulldozers spared. Look for the bell tower and the old stone crosses in the courtyard. Ten minutes south, Carol Park has the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in a mausoleum the communists built for their own leaders.

Cross the Dâmbovița into the Old Town, the medieval merchant quarter that survived the demolitions, and have lunch on the way. At its heart are the ruins of the Old Princely Court (Curtea Veche). The oldest written mention of Bucharest is a charter Vlad III, the Impaler, signed here on 20 September 1459. He didn't found the town, and he isn't the vampire, but the court was the seat of the princes of Wallachia for centuries. The museum has been closed since 2015 and emergency repairs to the ruins were announced in 2026, but you can see them from the street, and the court church next to them, from the 1550s and the oldest in the city, is open.

Two streets away is Stavropoleos, a small church of 1724 in the Brâncovenesc style, Wallachia's own mix of Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian, with a carved stone porch and a courtyard of old gravestones. It's the finest building in the Old Town and one of the quietest. Its choir sings Byzantine chant at the services.

Walk past Hanul lui Manuc, a caravanserai of 1808 with wooden galleries around a courtyard, the largest of the old inns that survive in the Old Town. The Treaty of Bucharest of 1812, which handed Bessarabia to Russia, was signed here. Today it holds restaurants, which are pricey and touristy, but walk into the courtyard.

Then go up Lipscani street to Cărturești Carusel, a bookshop in a restored 19th-century bank building, all white spiraling balconies on six floors, with a café on top. It's often called one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world, and it's free to wander.

Caru' cu Bere has served beer since 1879, and its neo-Gothic hall of 1899, of carved wood, painted walls and stained glass is a sight on its own. It's busy and touristy, and the food is decent rather than great, but the house beer is good and there's often a folk dance show. Order ciorbă de burtă, the sour tripe soup with garlic and sour cream, sarmale, cabbage rolls with mămăligă (polenta), and papanași for dessert.

If you'd rather eat where Bucharest eats, La Mama, a local chain of Romanian home cooking, has a branch near University Square.

Start at the National Museum of Romanian History in the old Post Office palace. Most of the building has been waiting for a renovation for years, but what's open is the best of it: the Treasury downstairs, with Dacian gold bracelets and the Pietroasele treasure of Gothic gold, and in the hall a full-size cast of Trajan's Column in Rome, which tells the story of the Roman conquest of Dacia in 2,500 carved figures, at eye level instead of 30 meters up.

Across the street, the domed CEC Palace of 1900, built for the national savings bank, is one of the most French-looking buildings in town. Walk north from here up Calea Victoriei. Duck into the glass-roofed Macca-Villacrosse passage of 1891, past the Kretzulescu church of 1722, and look at the facades of old hotels, theaters and palaces between the newer buildings.

Enjoy the facades and ignore the traffic.

At lunchtime, cut five minutes west to Cișmigiu, the oldest park in the city, laid out in the 1840s and 50s around a lake, and eat on its edge. In summer people row boats, in winter they skate, and all year the old men play chess on the benches; the Writers' Rotunda has busts of Romania's great authors.

On 21 December 1989, Ceaușescu stood on the balcony of the Communist Party's Central Committee building on this square to give a speech to a crowd brought in to cheer him, four days after his troops had fired on protesters in Timișoara. The crowd began to boo, the TV broadcast was cut, and his face on the live footage, confused and then frightened, became the image of the end. That night soldiers fired on protesters around University Square. The next day he fled from the roof by helicopter; on Christmas Day he and his wife Elena were tried and shot.

Across Romania more than a thousand people died in those days, most of them after he fled, in shooting whose origins are still disputed and still in the courts. The building is now the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In front stands the Memorial of Rebirth, a white spike piercing a dark crown that locals call "the potato on a stake" or "the olive on the toothpick".

Across the square is the old Royal Palace, now the National Museum of Art of Romania. The palace was damaged in the fighting of 1989, and the Romanian galleries are the reason to go: medieval icons and church treasures, then Nicolae Grigorescu's paintings of peasant life and the early works of Constantin Brâncuși, the Romanian sculptor who changed modern art.

Grab a covrig, Bucharest's pretzel, from a bakery window on the way; they're sold hot all day near every metro station. Or sit down for a proper coffee. The small cafés around the square and Cișmigiu do good filter coffee and flat whites.

Finish back by Revolution Square at the Romanian Athenaeum, the domed concert hall of 1888 and the symbol of the city. It was paid for partly by a public appeal, "Give a leu for the Athenaeum". Inside, a fresco about 75 meters long runs around the round hall with the story of the Romanian people. It's the home of the George Enescu Philharmonic, named after Romania's great composer, and the best way in is a concert, tickets for which cost much less than in Western Europe.

Afterwards have dinner nearby, or walk down to University Square, where people died on the night of 21 December 1989 and where students camped for weeks in the spring of 1990 against the new government, until miners brought in from the Jiu Valley broke it up with clubs in June.

The Museum of the Romanian Peasant was named European Museum of the Year in 1996, and it's still unlike any other folk museum: rooms arranged more like an artist's installation than a museum, with handwritten labels, painted crosses, carpets, icons on glass, and a whole wooden church in the courtyard. The communists used the building for a museum of the party; the painter Horia Bernea turned it back after 1990. It fully reopened in June 2026 after renovation.

The curators also made a basement exhibition of communist propaganda, Ciuma (The Plague), hung as a deliberately uncomfortable joke; ask whether it's on show. Next door, the Grigore Antipa museum of natural history is a good stop with children. The museum shop is one of the best places in the city to buy real crafts.

Walk or take a bus 20 minutes up Kiseleff to the Arcul de Triumf, The first, of wood, went up in 1878 after independence; the second, of concrete and plaster, in 1922 for the troops returning from World War I; the stone arch you see was unveiled on 1 December 1936. It's smaller than the one in Paris, and on some days a small museum and the roof terrace are open. The 1 December National Day parade passes under it.

On the edge of the park, the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum, opened in 1936, has more than 300 houses, churches, windmills and farm buildings brought here from villages all over Romania. You walk from Maramureș, with its tall wooden gates and steep shingle roofs, to the half-underground houses of the Danube plain, and the wooden church from Maramureș is a highlight. Locals come for a walk; you can easily spend longer than planned. The house interiors are open Wednesday to Sunday.

Have a late lunch of mici (or mititei), small grilled rolls of minced meat with garlic, no casing, with mustard, bread and a beer. Berăria H, a huge beer hall near the Village Museum, does them with live music, or, in summer, a terrace by the lake in King Michael I Park, still called Herăstrău by everyone who grew up here. Walk part of the lake path afterwards; the Japanese garden is lovely in April when the cherry trees flower.

Take a Bolt 10 minutes east (it's a 30-minute walk) to Primăverii, the leafy quarter where the communist elite lived, and the Spring Palace, the private home of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu for 24 years. While Romanians lived with rationed food, heating and hot water cut off in winter and regular power cuts, the dictator and his family had a mosaic swimming pool, a private cinema, a winter garden with peacocks, gold taps, Murano chandeliers and a closet of Elena's fur coats. Their dog Corbu, the story goes, had his own villa.

The guided tour is gripping exactly because the house is so ordinary in its bad taste. It explains the anger of December 1989 better than most museums.

Stay north for dinner. Floreasca and Dorobanți, next to Primăverii, are where Bucharest's money goes out to eat, with wine bars, modern Romanian kitchens and grills. It's a good night to try Fetească Neagră, Romania's native red grape, from the Dealu Mare hills, an hour or so northeast of the city.

From the station, walk 30-40 minutes up through the town and the forest to Peleș Castle, built in 1873-1914 for Carol I, the German prince who became Romania's first king. It had central heating from 1883 and its own electricity from 1884, among the first castles in Europe to be fully electrified, and the more than 160 rooms inside are packed with carved wood, armor, stained glass and paintings, in every historical style the 19th century could think of. It's wildly over the top, and that's the fun.

Next to it stands Pelișor, the smaller Art Nouveau house of Queen Marie, Carol's niece-in-law and the most loved royal in Romanian memory.

On the way back down, stop at the Sinaia Monastery, founded in 1695 by the Wallachian nobleman Mihai Cantacuzino after a pilgrimage to St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai, which gave the town its name. The small old church in the inner courtyard keeps its original painted walls; the bigger church in the main courtyard was built in the 1840s.

Have lunch in town, mountain style: bulz, polenta wrapped around sheep's cheese and baked, or a ciorbă (sour soup) and grilled trout. In the cold months, a mug of mulled wine afterwards is close to compulsory.

Above Sinaia rise the Bucegi mountains. The older cable car (telecabina) from the edge of town climbs to Cota 1400, and a gondola continues to Cota 2000, for the view over the Prahova valley and the bare plateau of the Bucegi. Or take the train one stop north to Bușteni, 10 minutes, for the Cantacuzino Castle of 1901-11, open every day, and the view of the Caraiman cross on the cliffs above.

Take a train back to Gara de Nord in the late afternoon (there are about two an hour), and have a quiet dinner near your hotel. For a longer stay in the mountains, Brașov is only an hour further on, and our Brașov guide covers Peleș, Bran and the rest of the region in more detail.

Obor is Bucharest's biggest market, and nobody goes there for the view. The covered hall and the stalls outside sell everything from vegetables and sheep's cheese to pickles and plastic buckets, and in autumn you'll see families buying peppers and aubergines by the sack for zacuscă, the roasted vegetable spread they put up in jars for winter.

The grills on the terraces outside are known for mici, and plenty of locals swear by them. Have a plăcintă, a cheese or apple pie, for breakfast, or mici if you come late in the morning.

Take the metro or a Bolt back towards the center and walk through Mântuleasa and the old Armenian quarter, east of University Square: quiet streets of villas from the 1900s to the 1930s, with Art Nouveau ironwork, neo-Romanian porches and the white Armenian Church. It's the Bucharest of the interwar novels, and it survived because Ceaușescu's plans never got this far. A little south, the Choral Temple, the main synagogue, stands near what was the Jewish quarter of Văcărești, razed in the 1980s.

Then walk west to Calea Victoriei and the Telephone Palace, finished around 1933, Bucharest's first skyscraper, an Art Deco tower that stayed the tallest building in the city until the 1950s.

Take bus 442 from Piața Presei Libere, in front of the Stalinist House of the Free Press, a copy of Moscow University built for the party newspaper (45-60 minutes) or a Bolt (30-40 minutes) north past the airport to Therme București, one of the largest thermal spas in Europe: warm pools under a glass dome full of palm trees, a dozen saunas, waterslides and an outdoor pool even in winter. The water is pumped from a geothermal source deep under the plain. It's busiest at weekends, so if your day five is a Saturday, go early.

Come back for a last dinner of Romanian classics, then pick your night. For cocktails, the bars around Cișmigiu and Calea Victoriei are excellent. For music, Bucharest's techno and rominimal scene has fans all over Europe, and clubs like Control in the center start after midnight. For something calmer, a glass of țuică, the plum brandy Romanians welcome guests with, and a long walk home past the lit-up Athenaeum.