Bucharest travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bucharest

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palace of the Parliament

   Ceaușescu's parliament building, and the heaviest building in the world — three hundred and sixty-five thousand square metres and eleven hundred rooms. A fifth of the historic centre, including nineteen churches, was demolished to clear the site, and much of the interior has never been used.

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2. 

   2© MIHAIL · CC BY 4.0

   National Cathedral

   An Orthodox cathedral begun in 2010 beside the parliament, consecrated in 2018 and still being finished — by internal volume the largest Orthodox church in the world. Its main bell, at twenty-five tonnes, is the largest swinging bell anywhere.

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3. 

   3

   Arcul de Triumf Bucharest

   A triumphal arch of 1936 in granite, replacing wooden predecessors of 1878 and 1922 raised for returning armies. Romanian soldiers still march through it each 1 December, and it stands on the boulevard laid out to imitate the Champs-Élysées.

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4. 

   4© Dennis G. Jarvis · CC BY-SA 2.0

   National Museum of Art of Romania

   The national art museum, in the former royal palace on Revolution Square, holding medieval Romanian icons and a European collection built by the kings. The building was hit and burned during the fighting of December 1989 and much of the collection was damaged.

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5. 

   5

   Herăstrău Park

   A hundred and eighty-seven hectares around a lake north of the centre, the largest park in the city and now named after King Michael I. The village museum stands inside it and the Japanese garden by the water is the quietest corner.

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6. 

   6© Chainwit. · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Romanian Patriarchal Cathedral

   A small church of the 1650s on the Metropolitan hill, and the seat of the Romanian Orthodox patriarch — a modest building for the head of the second largest Orthodox church in the world. The new national cathedral was built partly because of that mismatch.

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7. 

   7© Neoclassicism Enthusiast · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Romanian Peasant Museum

   A museum of Romanian rural life — textiles, icons on glass, ceramics, ploughs and a wooden church rebuilt in the courtyard — which won European Museum of the Year in 1996 for the way it displays them. It is the best argument in Bucharest for the country outside it.

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8. 

   8© Mihai Petre · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Lipscani

   The commercial quarter from the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, named for the merchants who traded with Leipzig. The ruins of the princely court where Vlad the Impaler issued the document that first names Bucharest, in 1459, are at one end of it.

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9. 

   9© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   National Museum of Romanian History

   The national history museum, in the enormous post office of 1900, holding the Pietroasele treasure of Gothic gold and a full-size plaster cast of Trajan's Column — cut into sections so that the Dacian wars can be read at eye level.

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10. 

    10

    Stavropoleos Monastery

    A church of 1724 in the Brâncovenesc style, small, carved and arcaded, and the loveliest building in central Bucharest. It was saved from demolition in the early twentieth century by the architect Ion Mincu, and nuns still sing Byzantine chant in it.

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1. 

   1© Nicubunu · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Revolution Square, Bucharest

   The square where the Ceaușescus made their last speech from the Central Committee balcony on 21 December 1989 and were booed, and from whose roof they fled by helicopter the following day. The balcony is still there; a twisted marble spike stands in the square as a memorial.

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2. 

   2© ES Vic · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Elisabeta Palace

   A palace of 1936 on Kiseleff Road, built for Princess Elisabeta. It became the residence of the Romanian royal family after their return from exile and is where the late King Michael lived; the grounds open on a few days a year.

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3. 

   3© Nicubunu · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Royal Palace of Bucharest

   The royal palace of Bucharest on Calea Victoriei, the official residence of the kings of Romania until Michael I abdicated in 1947. The National Museum of Art of Romania has occupied it since 1950.

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4. 

   4© Radu Ana Maria · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Mogoșoaia Palace

   A palace of 1702 built by Constantin Brâncoveanu ten kilometres outside the city, in the Romanian Renaissance style named after him. Martha Bibescu restored it in the twentieth century and ran a literary salon in it; the loggia over the lake is the reason to go.

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5. 

   5© bogdan · CC BY 2.0

   Piața Unirii

   The largest square in central Bucharest and one of the largest public spaces in Europe, made by culverting the Dâmbovița river and driving a boulevard through the old city. Fountains run down the middle of it, and the whole thing was built to be looked at from the parliament.

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   6

   Carol Park

   A French-style park of 1906 on the Filaret hill, laid out for a national exhibition. Communist leaders were buried in a mausoleum at its top; their remains were removed in 1991 and the monument is now to unknown soldiers.

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7. 

   7© Chainwit. · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum in Bucharest

   An open-air museum founded in 1936 in the park, with a hundred and twenty-three real buildings brought from across Romania — houses, churches, windmills, a whole wooden village. It covers over ten hectares and holds some fifty thousand objects.

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8. 

   8© Mastermindsro · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Cișmigiu Gardens

   The oldest and largest park in central Bucharest, laid out from 1847 by a German gardener around an artificial lake, with a rotunda of writers' busts and a chess corner that is permanently occupied.

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9. 

   9© Aleksandr Osipov from Ukraine · CC BY-SA 2.0

   University Square

   The square in front of the university, and the site of the Golaniad — the weeks of occupation in 1990 by protesters who called themselves hooligans after the government did. Miners were brought in to clear them; a memorial cross marks it.

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10. 

    10© Mister No · CC BY 3.0

    Cantacuzino palace

    A palace at 141 Calea Victoriei in Bucharest. The architect Ion D. Berindey built it in the Beaux-Arts manner, with several rooms in rococo revival; George Enescu lived in it and it now holds the museum devoted to him.

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