Four days in Bucharest: the city Ceausescu tried to replace
Three nights in one city, almost all of it on foot or on the metro, with one building you have to book ahead.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Bucharest
- Places
- 11 across 4 days
Bucharest is not a pretty capital and it does not try to be. Through the 1980s a large slice of the historic centre was pulled down to make room for a boulevard and a parliament building, and what survived sits in the gaps: a Brancovenesc church behind a glass office block, a merchant's inn next to a bank, a park laid out in the 1840s a few streets from a ministry.
That mix is the reason to come. In three walkable days you can stand in the marble hall Ceausescu built for himself, sit in the courtyard of a monastery church that predates it by two centuries, and eat lunch in a beer hall that survived both. Very little of it is queued for, almost none of it is expensive, and the metro will take you between the clusters in a quarter of an hour.
Four days is the honest length: one to find your feet in the Old Town, two full days for the two ends of the city, and a last morning on Calea Victoriei before the airport bus.
Highlights
- The Palace of the Parliament, booked a day ahead, seen from the inside rather than photographed from the road
- Stavropoleos, a tiny 1720s church with a cloister that most people walk straight past
- Ceausescu's own villa in the north of the city, kept exactly as he left it
- Three hundred wooden buildings moved to a park by a lake at the Village Museum
- The balcony on Revolution Square where the speech went wrong in December 1989
Where to stay
Bucharest, three nights
Stay in or just north of the Old Town. From there the parliament is a 20 minute walk, Revolution Square is 15, and the metro to the northern museums leaves from Universitate or Piata Romana.
The Old Town itself is loud until about two in the morning at weekends, so ask for a room off Strada Lipscani if you sleep lightly. A street or two of distance fixes it entirely.
Day by day
Day 1 in Bucharest
The Old Town, Stavropoleos and a beer hall
The surviving old quarter is small, maybe six streets by four, and the pleasure of it is that nothing is signposted. Eighteenth century church doors open off streets otherwise given over to bars, and the 1980s demolition stopped at its edge, which is why it feels like a fragment rather than a centre.
Start late if you have flown in. Nothing here takes long, and the point of the first afternoon is to work out how the city fits together before you commit a whole day to either end of it.
- 14:30
Old City
OtherThe few streets Ceausescu's bulldozers never reached, now the densest concentration of bars in Romania and, in daylight, a very good hour of aimless walking.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 15:50
Stavropoleos Church
ReligiousA monastery church from the 1720s, barely bigger than a room, with carved stone doorframes and a quiet brick cloister behind it. Go in; almost nobody does.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 16:40
Cărturești Carusel
OtherA bookshop over six floors of a restored 19th century building, white and spiralling, with a cafe at the top. Worth the ten minutes even if you buy nothing.
_34.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 19:00
Caru' cu Bere
OtherDinner under the painted vaults of the most theatrical dining room in Bucharest. Book, or turn up before seven and take a table upstairs.
With more time: If you land in the morning instead, walk east to the Curtea Veche ruins first: the old princely court is a ten minute detour and it explains why the city grew here at all.
Day 2 in Bucharest
The parliament, the old park and Revolution Square
Today runs south to north along the axis Ceausescu cut through the city, and it is the day that explains Bucharest. The parliament went up on a hill that had a neighbourhood on it, and the boulevard leading to it was built one metre wider than the Champs Elysees on purpose.
Take the earliest tour slot you can get. The building is cold inside even in August, the tour covers a tiny fraction of the floor area, and you will still be walking for an hour and a half.
Afterwards the day softens: a park from the 1840s, then the square where the regime that built all this collapsed on live television.
- 09:30
Palace of the Parliament
ReligiousSecond only to the Pentagon among administrative buildings, and heavier than either. The tour shows a small fraction of it, which is more than enough marble for one morning.
- 13:00
Lunch near Piata Unirii
EatWalk back down the boulevard and eat around Piata Unirii; the restaurants on the side streets are half the price of the ones facing the fountains.
- 14:30
Cişmigiu Garden
LeisureThe oldest park in the city, laid out between 1845 and 1860 around a lake with rowing boats in summer and an ice rink in winter. Locals play chess along the eastern path all afternoon.
- 16:00
Revolution Square
ArchitectureThe balcony Ceausescu was speaking from on 21 December 1989 when the crowd turned on him. The white spike in the middle of the square is the memorial to what followed.
With more time: Calea Victoriei runs north from the square and is the best street in Bucharest for an unplanned hour: palaces, a casino, a couple of good cafes and some very odd 1930s apartment blocks.
Day 3 in Bucharest
North along Kiseleff: peasants, wooden churches and a dictator's villa
The northern boulevard is where Bucharest kept its museums, and three of the best sit within four kilometres of each other on the M2 metro line. Do them in geographical order and you will barely wait for anything.
The two ethnographic collections are not the same museum twice. One is about objects and how they were made; the other moved the actual buildings here, three hundred of them, and set them out along paths by the lake.
The villa at the end of the day is the strangest thing in the city: gold taps, a mosaic swimming pool, a peacock garden, and the very ordinary handwriting of the family who lived there.
- 09:30
Museum of the Romanian Peasant
CultureTextiles, painted furniture, icons on glass and whole reassembled room interiors from villages that no longer exist. Start here, before the open air museum, and the wooden houses make far more sense.
- 11:30
Village Museum
CultureAround 300 real buildings, moved here from across the country since 1934: churches, watermills, sunken cottages from the plains, a windmill from the Danube delta. Allow two hours and wear something you can walk in.
_Biserica_de_lemn_din_Dragomire%25C8%2599ti%252C_Maramure%25C8%2599%252C_1722_-_img_18.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 13:45
Lunch by the lake
EatThere are cafes at the museum gate and better ones on the lakeside path just north of it. Either way, eat outside if the weather allows.
- 15:00
Primăveri Palace
HistoricThe Ceausescu family house, opened to the public exactly as it was left. Small tour groups, timed entry, and an hour that will stay with you longer than the parliament did.
With more time: The lake and the park behind the open air museum go on for kilometres and are full of Bucharesters on a Sunday. If you have an hour spare, walk the western shore rather than taking the metro straight back.
Day 4 in Bucharest
The Royal Palace and a concert hall, then out
Keep the last morning to one square. The former royal palace and the concert hall opposite are a two minute walk apart, both open mid morning, and both are the sort of place you can leave after 40 minutes without feeling short changed.
Allow two hours to the airport from the centre if you are taking the express bus, more between four and seven in the evening.
- 10:00
National Art Museum
CultureThe old royal palace, now holding the national collection: medieval icons and church panels downstairs, Romanian painting upstairs, and a European gallery that is better than it has any right to be.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D500)
- 12:00
Romanian Atheneum
CultureA domed 1880s concert hall with a circular fresco running the whole way round the auditorium. Ask at the desk; if nothing is rehearsing they will usually let you look in.
With more time: With a later flight, the contemporary art museum occupies a wing of the parliament building and is reached by its own entrance at the back, which is a very Bucharest solution to a very Bucharest problem.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Almost everyone arrives at Henri Coanda, about 17 km north of the centre. The express bus into town takes 50 to 90 minutes depending on traffic and costs a fraction of a taxi; if you take a cab, book it from one of the machines in the arrivals hall rather than accepting an offer at the door.
The metro is the fastest thing in the city and the easiest to pay for: tap a contactless card or phone at the gate and the same tap covers trams and most buses for the next 90 minutes. Line M2 runs north to south under the middle of the city and connects almost everything in this trip.
Walking is fine, with one caution the locals will repeat to you: drivers here do not reliably stop at crossings. Look twice, and assume nothing at night.
When to go
May, June and September are the good months. July and August regularly sit around 30 C with no sea breeze and the Old Town becomes an oven of terrace heaters and air conditioning units; winter can drop below minus 10 C, though the museums are warm and the city is at its emptiest.
Spring is short here. April is often the whole of it.
Booking ahead
Only two things on this trip need arranging. Tours of the Palace of the Parliament are timed, run in fixed languages and sell out in summer, so book a slot a day or two ahead and bring the passport you booked with, because it is checked at the door.
Ceausescu's villa also runs on timed tours and takes far fewer people at once. Everything else you can walk into.
Bucharest is a city people arrive at and leave the same day, on the way to the mountains, and it is a bad habit. The thing worth seeing here is not one building, it is the argument between them: a monastery church, a merchant street, a park, and a parliament that tried to make all three irrelevant and failed.
Give it three nights and you will leave with an opinion about it, which is more than most European capitals manage.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is four days too long for Bucharest?
- No, but five would be. The city has two full days of first rank sights plus an arrival afternoon and a departure morning, which is exactly what four days gives you. If you have more time, spend it on the three hour train to Brasov rather than on a fifth day here.
- Do I need to book the Palace of the Parliament?
- Yes. Tours are timed, run in set languages, and sell out in July and August. Book at least a day ahead and carry the passport or ID you booked with, because it is checked against the list at security.
- Is Bucharest safe to walk around at night?
- The centre is, and violent crime is rare. The real hazard is traffic: drivers frequently do not stop at marked crossings, and the empty boulevards late at night are worse than the busy ones. The emergency number is 112.
- Can I do this trip without a car?
- Entirely. Every place on these four days is walkable from a metro station or from the Old Town, and the airport is on an express bus. A car in Bucharest is a parking problem with a windscreen.