The capital — Belle Époque arcades, Communist megalomania, and the best coffee scene in the country.
Bucharest is the country’s ambivalent capital — once nicknamed "Little Paris", later flattened in great chunks by Ceaușescu to make way for the Palace of Parliament (the second-largest building on earth by floor area). What survives is layered and strange: art-nouveau merchant houses next to brutalist plinths, the tiny 18th-century Stavropoleos Church a hundred metres from a Hard Rock Café. The new specialty-coffee, natural-wine and Levantine-food scene is among Europe’s most interesting. We route in or out of Bucharest for almost every guest flying via OTP.
Europe’s biggest classical marathon: three weeks of the world’s great orchestras in the gilded Athenaeum. Biennial — plan around it.
Details & tickets · Festivalul George Enescu →