Metravel city quest
City Bucharest: free walking route “quest: five centuries in reverse” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 2 h 30 min. Quests and legends - straight from
For most old cities, the founding date is a legend lost in mist. Bucharest's is in the archives, preserved on parchment. On 20 September 1459, the ruler of Wallachia signed a charter exempting Andrei and his sons' land from taxes. It was signed ‘in the fortress of Bucharest’, ‘cetatea Bucureștilor’. This is the earliest surviving written mention of the city's name. Ever since, Bucharest's people have celebrated their capital's birthday on 20 September. The man who signed is known worldwide by another, more frightening name: Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula.
Today you will walk Bucharest in reverse, from its newest historical layer down through the centuries to the place where its name was born. The route begins on a square where, a little over a century after Vlad, in December 1989, an entire era collapsed from a balcony, and ends at the fortress fragments where it all began.
Along the way are a concert hall built with lei collected across the city, a glass-domed bank, an arcade beneath coloured glass, a brewers' tavern in a Gothic Revival hall, a bookshop in a former banker's mansion and finally the court ruins from which ‘Bucharest’ took its name.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
This walking route is about two and a half kilometres long, all through central Bucharest, from Revolution Square to the Old Town. We start at the Romanian Athenaeum on the square's northern edge. Onwards, through the centuries — backwards!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
The round building with a colonnade and dome is Romania's most recognisable concert hall, home of the George Enescu Philharmonic. Construction began in 1886 to French architect Albert Galleron's design, a rare case of a building created by an entire city as well as its architect.
Walk down from the Athenaeum onto the square itself. Until 1989, it was Palace Square, the communist government's ceremonial showcase.
Follow Calea Victoriei south, old Bucharest's chief avenue, which leads straight to the next stop. After about fifteen minutes, a building with a huge glass dome opens on your left, resembling a stock exchange or a temple of trade: the CEC savings bank palace.
From CEC Palace, turn towards Lipscani. Soon you will find unusual paving beneath a fork-shaped glass roof with two prongs, and the light changes.
A couple of minutes away is a little church hidden in a courtyard between Lipscani's tall houses. You could easily walk past without knowing where to look, yet this is one of Bucharest's loveliest buildings.
Right beside Stavropoleos, a few steps away, are the stained-glass windows and carved façade of a place whose name means ‘beer wagon’. Beer has been brewed here in the same tradition for more than a hundred and forty years.
Go deeper into Lipscani, old Bucharest's main trading street. Its name comes from Leipzig, ‘Lipsca’ in old Romanian: merchants bringing western goods here were called ‘lipscani’.
An optional stop: on the way to the finale, Strada Franceză holds the wooden gallery of an old inn with an inner courtyard. Armenian merchant and diplomat Manuc Bey built the inn in 1806–1808.
Here is the journey's end and beginning at once. Behind a low fence on Strada Franceză lie brick and stone ruins: wall fragments, cellar vaults and broken columns.
A few steps from the ruins, still within the Old Court, stands a low church with thick walls and a distinctive roof silhouette. This is the finale of today's journey through the centuries, because nothing in Bucharest is older.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.