Bucharest

The story of Bucharest

Bucharest's name comes wrapped in a shepherd's tale: Bucur, whose name derives from the Romanian word for joy, is said to have founded a settlement on the Dâmbovița's banks. The documented city begins in 1459, in a decree signed by none other than Vlad the Impaler, and became the Wallachian, and later Romanian, capital.

The late 19th century gave the city French boulevards, gardens, and its own Arc de Triomphe, earning it the nickname "Little Paris of the East." The 20th century treated it roughly: war, earthquakes, and Ceaușescu's bulldozers, which flattened a fifth of the historic centre to raise the Palace of the Parliament, a building so vast it shows up in records as the heaviest on earth.

Curiosities: that palace has over a thousand rooms and sinks a few millimetres each year under its own weight; the Cărturești Carusel bookstore occupies a restored 19th-century bank atrium that went viral for good reason; and the Stavropoleos monastery courtyard offers perfect silence twenty metres from the old town's loudest bars.