Bucharest - the "Paris of the East"

1st September 2022

Our first impression of Bucharest, as we arrived downtown in the bus from the airport, was one of a rather large, grubby and somewhat chaotic city that had seen better days. It seemed to be a hotch-potch of faded Art Nouveau architecture (mostly French-built or inspired), grand municipal buildings, featureless apartment towers and Communist-built utilitarian monstrosities.

However, over the next few days as we discovered its history and secrets and learnt of the people and tragic events that had shaped it and its inhabitants, the city slowly grew on us leaving us with an overall more positive image of it.

Our Old Town tour started off in front of the vast Palace of the Parliament, begun during the final years of the former Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu's rule and was not finished until 1997 (seven years after his death). This architectural «folie des grandeurs» cost a staggering €3 billion to build (when many Romanians were literally starving). As many as 100,000 people worked on the site, hundreds of whom are thought to have perished. It has 1,100 rooms (the vast majority of which lie empty) and an annual heating bill of $6m (£4.63m), equivalent to that of a small city. Inside one can find 3,500 tonnes of crystal, 480 chandeliers and 1,409 ceiling lights, while 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze was used for monumental doors and windows. It is recognized as the world’s heaviest building.

To construct it, Ceausescu had most of the old town that had remained after the earthquake in 1977, demolished, and the historic core today is a plethora of modern clubs, bars, restaurants, art galleries and hipster coffee joints. However, there are still some highlights from the past to be enjoyed, such as:

· Caru' cu Bere - Bucharest’s most famous beer hall. It may be a tourist trap, but it’s hard not to get to swept up in the fun of the traditional costume, wood-panelled interiors and live music. Mylene enjoyed her supposedly most tasty Pork Knuckle ever here.

· Carturesti Carusel - surely one of the world’s coolest bookshops. This gorgeous galleried space opened in 2015 in a restored 19th century building. It contains more than 10,000 books, 5,000 albums and DVDs and a top floor bistro.

· Stavropoleis Church - 6 per cent of the population of Romania are Eastern Orthodox and there are Orthodox churches everywhere, including this one, with its elaborate frescoes and dazzling gold iconography.

The legacy of Ceausescu still hangs everywhere over the city and none more so than near the Piața Revoluției (Revolution Square). Here, some thirty years ago, he and his wife, Elena, were toppled following a dramatic, weeklong uprising across the country that cost more than a thousand lives. It was a pivotal moment in Romania’s historic transition to democracy. Some of the bloodiest fighting took place here and on closer inspection some buildings still bear pockmarks from the bullets. At the center of the square, the spiky Memorial of Rebirth is meant to honor those who died and to symbolize the country’s rebirth. Just across the square stands the former Central Committee building of the Romanian Communist Party. From the balcony on the front of the building (still visible), Ceausescu gave his last, ill-fated address to the nation on December 21, 1989, before fleeing from the roof in a helicopter. He and his wife were soon captured and were executed four days later.

It was here in Bucharest that we first came across the history of Vlad Tepes, the real-life, bloodthirsty prince who served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Bucharest was just beginning its rise as an important city in the 15th century, when Vlad was defending the fledgling principality of Wallachia from Ottoman incursions.

Thanks to Stoker, Dracula is more commonly associated with the region of Transylvania and it seemed the perfect moment now to set off there to discover more about this fascinating, if somewhat gruesome, character.