Bucharest is unsurprisingly the beating cultural, political and economic heart of Romania as a whole; home to the lion’s share of the country’s museums and churches, banks and big business buildings, not to mention a wealth of interesting historical sites simmering with stories, from the dark days of Ceausescu’s Communism, to the time when the city’s great medieval citadel played host to no less than Vlad the Impaler himself.
Most Bucharest tourist guides will recommend a tour of the city’s inner old town to begin with; a place of cobbled streets, quaint cafés, and, in the night some of the country’s coolest clubs, where the Communist rebuilding programs of the twentieth century failed to permeate. Then there’s the eye-popping marble wonder called the Parliament Palace, the largest building of its kind in the whole world.
Bucharest is also famed for its leafy parks and sprawling gardens. Check the Herastrau on the Colentina River, with its incumbent museum exhibitions and smattering of clubs, or the Cismigiu Garden, with its curious statuettes and romantic walkways, a great place to relax and unwind in the summer sun.