BUCHAREST (Bucuresti), with a population of over two million, may be the largest city between Berlin and Athens, but it’s by no means the most beautiful. At first sight the city is a chaotic jumble of traffic-choked streets, ugly concrete apartment blocks and grandiose but unfinished Communist developments. Lying 64km from the Danube, Romania’s southern border, but 600km from its northern frontier, it’s also far removed from the country’s more obvious attractions. And yet, it’s Romania’s centre of government and commerce and site of its main airport, so most visitors to the country will find themselves passing through Bucharest at some point. Founded by the princes of Wallachia and dominated by their Turkish overlords, Bucharest only came into its own with Romanian independence in the late nineteenth century, when it was remodelled by French and French-trained architects. The city was dubbed the “Paris of the East”, as much for its hectic and cosmopolitan social scene as for its architecture. The Romanian aristocracy was among the richest and most extravagant in Europe, but this lifestyle depended on the exploitation of the poor, and in Bucharest the two coexisted in what Ferdinand Lasalle described as “a savage hotchpotch”, with beggars waiting outside the best restaurants and appalling slums within a few steps of the elegant boulevards. Under Communism these extremes were reduced, but Capitalism has brought back conspicuous consumption and a new poor. Despite the signs of Westernization and a new prosperity, with glossy shops full of designer clothes and a rapidly expanding restaurant scene, few Bucharestians can afford to indulge in them.

The architecture of the old city, with its cosmopolitan air, was notoriously scarred by Ceausescu’s redevelopment project, which demolished an immense swathe of the historic centre and replaced it with a concrete jungle, the Centru Civic , including a huge new palace for the Communist leader, now known as the Palace of Parliament . The palace has become one of the city’s prime tourist sites and is best viewed along the approach from Piata Unirii. The other site that can on its own justify a visit to the city lies to the north of the centre: the Village Museum , a wonderful collection of vernacular buildings collected from all regions of Romania. Between these two poles, in the centre of the city, the National History Museum lays out the story of Romania’s development from prehistoric times to the 1920s. It’s in much the same style as every other county museum, but this is the biggest and best in the country.

More than most European capitals, Bucharest is an insider’s city. Behind the congested arteries lies a tangle of backstreets where concrete is softened by abundant greenery and the inhabitants manage to rise above the bureaucratic obstructions and inadequacies of the city’s infrastructure. The people are a cosmopolitan mixture: Romanians, Gypsies, Turks, Arabs, Africans and Pakistanis, now joined by thousands of Chinese who add yet another layer to the thriving underworld of traficanti , prostitutes and beggars.

Accommodation is more expensive in Bucharest than elsewhere, and you’re more likely to be hassled, hustled and overcharged. Though power and water cuts are now rare, many hotels are overheated in summer and freezing in winter, when snowdrifts grip the city and the temperature plunges to -20°F (-4°C). Unless Bucharest is your only destination, it’s as well to head for Transylvania or the coast as soon as possible. There are good train and road connections to the rest of the country, but local services to the towns and villages in the immediate vicinity are often limited or tortuous. However, there are some monasteries and mansions, notably at Snagov and Mogosoaia, which can be visited as day-trips.

The heart of the city is the Piata Revolutiei , site of the old Royal Palace and the scene of Ceausescu’s downfall. It lies halfway along Bucharest’s historic north-south axis, the Calea Victoriei , which is still the main artery of city life. Buses heading north and south, however, use the unattractive boulevards east of Calea Victoriei; the main junction along them is the Piata Universitatii , scene of major events immediately after the 1989 revolution.The majority of sights are within walking distance of these two Piatas. Just to the south lies the historic centre of the city, with the remains of the original citadel . Beyond this, across the River Dâmbovita, is the contrasting cityscape of Ceausescu’s Centru Civic , with its centrepiece, the monstrous Palace of Parliament , now the city’s main tourist attraction. Just west of the centre are the Cismigiu Gardens , a tranquil space and a popular place for assignations. For a taste of the old atmosphere of the city, you need to wander north and west of the gardens past the vine-covered facades, to suburbs where life retains a village-like slowness and intimacy, or head north from Piata Revolutiei along Calea Victoriei to Herastrau Park , the site of a superb collection of buildings brought here from all over Romania and assembled to form an area known as the Village Museum .

Centru Civic
Ceausescu’s megalomaniac project, the Centru Civic - the third largest building in the world, decorated throughout with gold leaf - almost bankrupted the country when it was built. It now houses the country’s parliament and hosts international conferences.

Orthodox Churches
When swathes of houses and monuments were demolished in the late Eighties to create the Centru Civic, all that was left standing were tiny Orthodox churches, which remain hidden amidst high-rise blocks. An example is the tiny Russian Church, faced with Art Nouveau tiling and nymphs.

Village Museum
The Village Museum is a display of over 300 houses, churches and other buildings collected from every region of Romania and reassembled here, by Lake Herastrau in the northern suburbs. The timber constructions and wood carvings are among the finest expressions of Romanian artistic sensibility.

Hanul lui Manuc
Built as an Armenian caravanserai, or merchants inn, in 1808, Hanul lui Manuc is still the most stylish place to stay in Bucharest. The courtyard also houses a restaurant, renowned for bad service, high prices and the godfatherish gatherings of the former Communist government.

Cismigiu Gardens
Cismigiu Gardens, just west of the centre, are the lungs of the city. Here swans and pedalos glide on willow-fringed lakes, while pensioners meet for chess and young rollerbladers glide by at high speed.

The Unirea Market
The biggest and best of the city’s markets, located just off Piata Unirii, Unirea’s concrete-domed structure is redolent of Communist centralism and shelters hundreds of representatives of village entrepreneurialism. There’s also a great view of the city from the rooftop café.

There are a couple of hassles in Bucharest that you should be aware of during your stay. If at some stage you’re approached by two or three men demanding to see your passport, don’t be too alarmed. Ignore their demands and do not give them anything - simply saying that all your documents are at the hotel should be enough to put them off - and walk off confidently; these self-styled tourist police are nothing more than cowardly con men. If they persist, insist that they accompany you to your hotel or the nearest police station, which should put them off.You should also be extremely vigilant where your belongings are concerned, in particular at the Gara de Nord, where bags can suddenly disappear, and on the buses, where a standard trick is to slit bags open, thus emptying some of the contents. Keep your bag close to your chest and eyes peeled.

Another, more unusual hassle, are stray dogs - a massive problem in the city. During Ceausescu’s systematization programme of the 1980s, many houses were bulldozed and owners had little choice but to kick their beloved canines out onto the street; since then the little beasts have been multiplying like nobody’s business, which has resulted in small packs of dogs roaming the streets and scavenging around rubbish tips. If at any time you feel threatened, either walk on slowly and confidently or mime throwing a stone and they’ll back off. Do not run! Whilst the chances of a nip on the ankles are slim, confrontations with these dogs can be unpleasant and intimidating

According to legend, Bucharest was founded by a shepherd called Bucur , who built a settlement amid the Vlasia forest. It was recorded as a nameless “citadel on the Dâmbovita” in 1368, and named as Bucharest in an edict from the time of Vlad the Impaler. Over the centuries, both Târgoviste and Bucharest have served as the Wallachian capital, but Bucharest finally secured its claim in 1659 - its location at the convergence of the trading routes to Istanbul outweighing the defensive advantages of Târgoviste’s location in the Carpathian foothills.As the boyars (nobles) moved into the city they built palaces and churches on the main streets radiating from the centre; these streets were surfaced with timber baulks and known as “bridges” ( pod ). Despite earthquakes and periodic attacks by Turks, Tatars, Austrians and Russians over the course of its history, the city continued to grow and to modernize. New boulevards were driven through the existing street pattern in the 1890s, after the style of Haussmann’s Paris, and they still form a ring road and the main north-south and east-west axes of the city. Most of the major buildings, such as the Romanian Athenaeum and the Cercul Militar , were designed by French or French-trained architects and built in the years before World War I. By 1918 the city’s population had grown to 380,000 and roads such as Podul Mogosoaiei, Podul de Pamânt and Podul Calacilor were widened, paved and renamed as the Calea Victoriei, Calea Plevnei and Calea Rahovei, in honour of the battles of the 1877-78 War of Independence from Turkey.

After World War II the city was ringed with ugly apartment buildings, first in areas such as “Red” Grivita, which the Allies had bombed flat (aiming for the rail yards), then expanding into the surrounding countryside; the population doubled from one to two million. In 1984, Ceausescu set out to impose his megalomaniac vision on the city, demolishing most of the area south of the centre to create a new Centru Civic which remains unfinished and seems likely to scar the city for many years yet.

Romania’s revolution was the most dramatic of the popular revolts that convulsed Eastern Europe in 1989. On the morning of December 21, 1989, a staged demonstration - organized to show support for the Ceausescu regime following days of rioting against it in Timisoara - backfired. Eight minutes into Ceausescu’s speech from the balcony of the Central Committee building, part of the eighty-thousand-strong crowd began chanting “Ti-mi-soa-ra, Ti-mi-soa-ra”; the leader’s shock and fear were televised across Romania before transmissions ceased. From that moment it was clear that the end of the Ceausescu regime was inevitable. Though the square was cleared by nightfall, larger crowds poured back next day, emboldened by news that the army was siding with the people in Timisoara and Bucharest. Strangely, the Ceausescus remained inside the Central Committee building until midday, when they scrambled aboard a helicopter on the roof, beginning a flight that would end with their execution in a barracks in Târgoviste, on Christmas Day.The revolution was tainted by having been stage-managed by the National Salvation Front that took power in the name of the people. The National Salvation Front consisted of veteran Communists, one of whom later let slip to a journalist that plans to oust the Ceausescus had been laid months before. Among the oddities of the “official” version of the events were Iliescu’s speech on the Piata Revolutiei at a time when “terrorist” snipers were causing mayhem in the square, and the battle for the Interior Ministry, during which both sides supposedly ceased firing after a mysterious phone call. Given the hundreds of genuine “martyrs of the revolution”, the idea that it had been simply a ploy by Party bureaucrats to oust the Ceausescus was shocking and potentially damaging to the new regime - so the secret police were ordered to mount an investigation, which duly concluded that while manipulation had occurred, the Russians, Americans and Hungarians were to blame.