Half a day in Bucharest: what to do and what to see
Romania is definitely in fashion and for all the good reasons. We are talking about one of the countries that has possibly changed the most since the drab times behind the Iron Curtain and the chaotic 90s that followed.
Discovering Cluj-Napoca, in Transylvania, was already a nice surprise. This time, it was the time to explore the country’s capital, Bucharest.
There was a catch, though, my overnight stopover only gave me roughly one morning and part of the early afternoon before having to head back to Otopeni airport to catch my next flight.
I am aware that such period of time doesn’t do justice to a city which was once known as “the Paris of the East”. This was, however, a challenge I was happy to take on, as visiting a city with a hard time constraint kind of helps you sharpen your sightseeing focus.
Bucharest city center is, in fact, quite compact, which means that if you don’t mind a bit of moderately-paced walking you can cover quite a few highlights even within this constrained timeframe. In this post I would suggest a few things you can do and a few interesting places you can visit if you ever find yourself in Bucharest and have a few hours to spare to do some sightseeing.
Getting from and to central Bucharest to Otopeni Airport
On my way into the city, since it was pretty late at night, I requested a Bolt ride, which cost me 67 Lei (some €13) to get to the cente, so pretty cheap for European standards.
There is an even cheaper way, though, particularly useful during the day and if you are near Piața Unirii, one of the city’s major transport hubs at the eastern edge of the historical center. Bus 100 runs every 20 minutes or so and takes around 40 minutes to get to the airport.
The ride costs 3 Lei (around €0.6) and it can be paid directly with your credit or debit card using the card reader inside the bus. It is a urban bus, so the comfort of the ride depends on how crowded it gets, but happy to report it went really well in my case (early afternoon on a Sunday).
Visiting the Romanian Parliament Building
The Romanian Parliament building is the one building that has got Bucharest in the World Record tables, since it was, at least for some time (not sure whether this is still true), the largest civilian building in the world (and I think second overall after the Pentagon).
This was actually one of the pet projects of the late Romanian dictator Ceaucescu and it somehow became a symbol of his megalomania. The 365,000 m2 (3,930,000 sq ft) building (by floor area) was started in the mid-1980s, when the regime was already in its twilight years and it wasn’t completed after more than a decade later, with Romania already a democracy.
So, once completed it has kept its function as the seat of the Romanian Parliament.
The Romanian Parliament building is open to visitors, BUT, only through tours which run on specific schedules. Sadly, I was not able to secure a spot, since it was already fully booked quite a few days before my visit. This was a bit of a disappointment, but nevertheless, and since it is within walking distance of old Bucharest, I went to see it from the outside.
In fact, this is not the only site linked to the history of Ceaucescu’s infamous regime that was also booked solid for the the whole day (and it was not even peak tourist season!), sign that there is quite a few people out there interested in the Cold War period!
So, even if you are unable to secure a spot on a tour, I would say, go see it and take some pics, since my guess is that the most impressive sights are possibly from outside anyway. You can check first the eastern facade, which opens onto a grand avenue (designed for military parades and the like) and then go check the main northern entrance, where this picture with the flag is (I actually went to the ticket counter to see whether there were any late minute openings, to no avail).
As we shall soon see in this post, there are other sites in town in which it is possible to explore the topic of Cold War Romania and which are easier to visit!
Bucharest Old Town
Despite its present-day modern appearance, Bucharest is quite an old city and it was already a vibrant trade center by the late Middle Ages. The center of the old town is just north of the Dambovita river.
I would say it is not huge in relation to the size of the overall city, although the area of sightseeing and commercial interest spreads also over the adjacent more modern districts. The core of the historical center is made of cobblestone streets and mostly pedestrianised.
Since I had limited time in town, I started early, walking from my hotel to the Parliament building all the way through the old town, and the place was empty at that time aside from a few church goers. In fact, it was a Sunday and the sound of bells and religious chants emanating from some of the churches added to the atmosphere. When I walked back a bit later in the morning, the place was quite more crowded with tourists.
Walking through the old town you can clearly see why Bucharest was called the “Paris of the East”. Besides the “soft”, cultural aspect of it (Romania’s traditional francophilia), there neoclassical architectural styles of this part of town would not be out of place in some part of the other Paris, the one in the West.
The one thing that got me a bit concerned, though, is that, just as it has happened in other European capitals, the area is totally full of rather banal bars, restaurants and souvenir shops, many of them with rather tacky signage and the like.
In this regard, another aspect of Bucharest that caught my eye is that the city, outside of a handful of streets at the very core of the old town, is a bit of a hotchpotch of different styles, most of them post-war and not particularly well matched. In this regard, it reminded me a bit of Madrid, another undeniably buzzing city, that nevertheless grew fast and in a not particularly orderly way in the post-war period.
So, in short, if want to see the best of Bucharest old town, I’d say just wander a bit around Lipiscani Street, check the National Bank of Romania, possibly the grandest building of all in this area, don’t forget to check the Stavropoleos Monastery (detailed next in this post) and venture a bit further north, to University Square and beyond if you have time.
I went as far as the building of the Ministry of the Interior because this is another place of historical significance as we shall soon see…
The Stavropoleos Monastery
This is a historical and architectural gem in the middle of old Bucharest. It is small in size, but rich in content (with some amazing paintings inside).
Bucharest’s Stavropoleos Monastery is also one best exponents of the so-called Brâncovenesc style, which developed in Romania in the 17-18th Centuries, combining stylistic elements from the Eastern Roman and Ottoman cultures as well as from Renaissance and Barroque architecture.
What’s also quite amazing is that this monastery, which was built in 1724, has survived pretty much intact in the middle of Bucharest. Today is surrounded by much larger buildings on all sides.
You can come in at any time during the day (except during services, unless you are taking part in them) and it is free to visit.
Where to eat in Bucharest: Casa Capșa
Ok, this review refers to Casa Capșa more of a place for a short rest and a coffee than to have a proper meal, but remember that, on this tour we have a hard time constraint, so, on this occasion, sitting down for a proper meal was out of the question!
I still wanted to taste something original, so I headed for a pit stop at Casa Capșa, one of Bucharests historical restaurants, which is also the place where the Joffre cake was invented.
The Joffre cake takes its name from the Catalan-French hero of the First World War, who visited Bucharest in 1920. The cake’s cylindrically-shaped chocolate cake is a reference to the French “képi”, the iconic military hat, while its size appears to have been devised to remain within the bounds of what was tolerable to Joffre’s health at the time.
But even if you are not into chocolate and sweets (depicted in the photo is NOT a Joffre cake, but a sort of cheese cake which was actually very tasty!), you can enjoy a whole range of other delicacies at Casa Capșa, all served in a very classical setting!
National History Museum of Romania
Also located in the old town, and in a rather grand building, is the National History Museum of Romania, which I would also recommend.
There is quite a lot of interest in this museum, even if the collections, both temporary and permanent, are organized in a way that is a bit difficult to understand, with Ancient Rome and the Dacians in the room next to the WW2 air campaign against the Ploiesti oil basin.
I guess part of this is due to the need to fit such a broad range of topics in a sort of “old-school” building.
When you come in (the ticket is something like the equivalent of a couple of euros), you may come across some temporary exhibits. When I visited there was some exhibition about children’s toys throughout the 20th Century, but this may change.
The collections that I found of most interest were about Romania in the Second World War, which is actually a theater of the war that is often forgotten by the mainstream accounts of the conflict. As someone interested in the minutiae of WW2, I greatly enjoyed the exhibition about the air campaigns the allies conducted against the Romanian oil industry, the main source of oil for the Axis throughout most of the war.
The exhibits are rather modernly arranged, with explanations in English and a huge amount of detail down to pretty much every individual raid.
But perhaps the most visually interesting part of the museum is that dedicated to Romania in ancient times.
Romanians take their Roman roots very, very seriously, as exemplified, to start with, by the name of the country, although they also take pride in their Dacian (pre-Roman) past.
At the museum there is a replica of the Trajan Column (the original is, of course, in Rome), which depicts in all details the campaigns that Emperor Trajan conducted in what is now Romania to bring it under the fold of the Roman Empire in the 2nd C. AD. While you may be able to see the original in the Italian capital, here you can see it from up close and understand what is being told in each of its sections.
There are also several rooms displaying rather spectacular historical artifacts, including jewellery and other items archaeologists have found in the territory of what is now Romania, from the Ancient pre-Roman civilizations all the way to the Middle Ages and the period of Ottoman domination and the Romanian monarchy in the first half of the 20th C.
Cold War Tourism in Bucharest
Museum of Communism
This is a small, but very interesting museum in the very center of Bucharest (from the set up I think it is some sort of private initiative) which explains how life was like in Romania under Communism and the dramatic events that led to the regime’s downfall and the execution of dictator Ceaucescu and his wife in December 1989.
There are quite a few of these museums throughout Eastern Europe, but, of course, each of them has a bit of a local flavour.
Romania was under a Communist dictatorship for a bit over 40 years, until the regime collapsed in 1989. During this period of time, the country remained one of Europe’s poorest and only recently has started to leave this legacy behind.
The museum takes just one floor of a building, so you can see it relatively quickly. Staff were very friendly, welcomed me and offered to provide any additional explanations I may need during the visit (perhaps it helped there were not many people around at the time of my visit).
Each of the rooms (it is really like a large flat) explains a particular topic, such as the repression of dissent by the Securitate, the regime’s ubiquitous and feared secret police or the efforts of the Romanian regime to turn Romania into a major industrial country at all costs.
An interesting fact is that, unlike in other parts of the Eastern Bloc, living standards got actually worse in Romania in the 1980s compared to the preceding decades. This was in great part because of Ceaucescu’s own autharchic policies, which made it a bit of an odd character within the Warsaw Pact during his last years in power.
The museum has several rooms depicting how the typical Romanian family lived and it has plenty of items relating to everyday life during this historical period
Bucharest’s Revolution Square: the site of Ceaucescu’s last speech
One of my childhood memories is watching the Romanian revolution of 1989 being televised pretty much live. This is perhaps the reason during this trip I prioritised the sites that are connected to those events. I already mentioned my semi-frustrated attempt to get on a tour of the Romanian Parliament building. Unfortunately, Ceaucescu’s villa, another tourist hotspot in Bucharest, was also fully booked.
There is, however, a site of major significance that it is perfectly possible to visit at any time: the square in front of the Ministry of the Interior building where Ceaucescu delivered his last speech before realizing he was losing control of the country.
In case you had not seen it, here is footage of those events:
That building is still today the Ministry of the Interior of Romania, the square in front of it has now several memorial elements that remember what happened on that fateful day in which Ceaucescu had to leave from the roof on a helicopter.
I was surprised to find out the balcony is actually quite small and low-lying, and that it was also enclosed in a short of open courtyard. The TV images give an impression of a much larger setting, but I guess part of the job of the regime’s TV producers was to make it look that way.
Revolution Square, as it is called nowadays, has several monumental elements remembering those events
There are several commemorative elements on Bucharest’s Revolution Square:
The most prominent of which is the Memorial of Rebirth, an obelisk-like monument crowned by a round metal structure. Inaugurated in 2005, it remembers the dozens of people that died to bring democracy to Romania during the Revolution of 1989.
Where to stay in Bucharest
AT Central Apartments
strada Anton Pann 19A
030795 Bucharest
These serviced apartments are located within walking distance of the old town in a rather quiet side street. One of the low-rises that dot this part of town has been totally renovated inside.
The room was rather modern and spacious and fitted with a small kitchen.
The only if is that thee bed linen was not of the best quality and this detracts a bit from the experience since it gives it a bit of cheap feel which is not in line with the rest of the facilities.
The building is fully automated and you are given an access code before your arrival. There is also a small common kitchen area at the top floor where it is possible to get some coffee and tea (included in your fee), as well as a storage area where you can lock your luggage (you can request for your access code to be extended to pick it up after check out from the room).
But the best of all, in my opinion is the rooftop terrace, where you can have your coffee with views of the city.
Overall, pretty good value for money!
By the way, if you travel to Romania, chances are you will fly either the national flag carrier TAROM or low-cost airline Wizz Air. So, I encourage you to check the flight reviews on our sister website Allplane:
Top things to see and to do in Cluj-Napoca, the heart of Transylvania
A recent aviation conference, Aviation-Event CLJ 2025, hosted by Avram Iancu Cluj International Airport, provided me an ideal opportunity to set foot in Romania for the very first time.
And what can I say? It totally surpassed my expectations!
Cluj-Napoca turned out to be a truly hidden hem (in fact, increasingly less hidden, since airlines are connecting the city to an increasing number of destinations throughout Europe and beyond), with a rather pleasant, tidy, beautiful and very walkable city center.
In this post I will share what I think are the top things to see and to do in Cluj-Napoca, the city that has come to be known as the “heart” of Transylvania.
To be clear, this was a short stay, but Cluj-Napoca’s historical center is not huge, so you can get a good grasp of the place in a couple of days, which is the amount of time I spent sightseeing in Cluj.
A walk through the old town of Cluj
Cluj-Napoca is an ancient city. In fact, the second part of its name, “Napoca”, which was added in the post-war years, is a reference to its past as a Roman colony.
Romania takes big pride in its Roman heritage (starting by the name of the country itself!). In fact, the fortified Roman city of Napoca was one of the northermost Roman outposts in this part of Europe, almost at the limits of the Roman province of Dacia.
But, this is only part of the story, because, like many places in this part of Eastern Europe, borders have changed frequently in this part of Europe and populations and languages have mixed, with different linguistic and national groups often living side by side for centuries.
This is also the case of Cluj. For long time the city was part of the historical kingdom of Hungary (with some prominent Hungarian kings being actually born in the city). It later became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, finally, joined the independent state of Romania.
An obelisk marking the visit to the city of Cluj of Austrian Emperor Francis I in the early 19th C.
In addition to the Romanian-speaking population, which today is the vast majority, Cluj, like the rest of Transylvania, has also a sizable Hungarian-speaking minority and, until WW2 it had also substantial, Jewish and German-speaking (Saxon) populations too.
This diverse cultural mix is reflected in the fact that the city has three names. In addition to its Romanian name Cluj, the city has also been known historically as Kolozsvar (Hungarian), Klausenburg (German) and Claudiopolis (Latin).
Likewise, the center of Cluj has historically been dotted by churches of different confessions (Roman Catholic, Romanian Greek Catholic, Romanian Orthodox and Protestant) in addition to synagogues (most of the Jewish heritage was, sadly, lost during WW2, when the local community was deported and killed by the Nazis).
We had the privilege to be guided around the center of Cluj by Catalin, of Cluj Guided Tours, who helped us understand the many nuances and rather complex history of this city and the different peoples that have shaped its past.
The present-day historical center of Cluj corresponds roughly with what used to be within the walled perimeter of the city, but fortifications were torn down by the Austrians in the 18th C. so only a couple of towers remain in place.
The city center has a handful of pedestrianised cobbled streets of the sort you find in many of the cities across what used to be the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fortunately, and unlike in other cities in this part of Europe, this area hasn’t been overtly taken over (at least not yet!) by Irish pubs and souvenir shops!
One of the key points in the old town is this whitewashed house depicted in the picture above (in fact, as our guide explained to us, it is the amalgamation of three different houses), where one of the greatest Hungarian kings, Matthias Corvinus, was born in the 15th C. A plate by the door marks this event.
It is said that the king later granted a long-lasting tax exemption to the inn where he was born.
Equally interesting is the adjacent and somehow “newer” part of town, which contains most of the 18th and 19th C. buildings, kept in perfect condition, together with a handful of broad avenues and commercial streets.
It is here where we find another of the city’s singular monuments, the Monument of the Signers of the Transylvanian Memorandum, which alludes to an episode in the late 19th C., in which Romanians living within what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire petitioned the emperor in Vienna for equal rights as a national minority.
The Church of Saint Michael, Cluj
The center of gravity of Cluj is Unirii Square, a wide open space which contains two of the city’s landmarks: Saint Michael’s Church and the monument to Mathias Corvinus, the aforementioned king of Hungary.
Besides its monumental appareance, flanked by grand buildings on pretty much all sides, Unirii Square acts also as a nexus between different parts of the city center: the old town, the commercial area and the university area, and it sees a constant flux of people.
The Church of Saint Michael is a rather remarkable and beautiful building, with plenty of light coming in through its stained glass windows.
The church was originally much more extensively decorated, but most of this decor was either smashed or covered during a period, in the 16th C. when it was taken over by Protestants. It later returned to the Roman Catholic Church and some of those artistic elements were restored to some extent, like some of the frescoes you can see in the picture below. The elaborately carved wooden lectern was also preserved.
Cluj is a university city
Another element that makes contemporary Cluj stand out is its university activity. About one in four of the city’s inhabitants is a student!
This has also helped Cluj become a center of knowledge-based industries in Romania, such as IT and pharma, although many of the major faculties are actually located around the old town, for example in the area depicted below (the style of which reminded me of Italy somehow!).
What to see in modern Cluj
It is not all about the old town in Cluj. The more modern bits of the center are not devoid of interest.
It is worth walking to Avram Iancu Square to see the Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral, which it is actually quite recent (for the standards of the rest of the city) and was completed in 1933. The square is named after local national hero Avram Iancu (the same who gives name to the airport!), who campaigned for the rights of Romanians within the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th Century. Iancu has also a statue in the middle of the square.
Opposite the cathedral there are a number of remarkable ornate buildings form the same period, including the Romanian Opera House (there is another opera house in Cluj, the Hungarian one!).
Also, not far from there are the works of the new Greek Catholic cathedral, which, apparently, have been ongoing for a rather long period of time, to the point that our guide compared them to Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, not a far-fetched comparison!
Throughout the center you can also find quite a few remarkable buildings, most of them built sometime in the late 19th or early 20th C. periods.
Cluj has also its fair share of Communist-era brutalist buildings, although most of them are in the outskirts of the city (you see quite a few of them on the way from the center to the airport).
The river Someșul Mic (with its adjacent canals) flows through the very center of Cluj, just north of the historical center.
This is not a large river, but it offers some sights from atop its bridges and it is also flanked by some green recreational areas, such as Cluj’s Central Park, which shall see shortly.
Walking through Cluj’s Central Park
Cluj’s Central Park (“Parcul Central”), a broad and elongated, recreational area next to the old town, is a rather remarkable space.
It is was given this recreational function already in the 19th C. and it has the look and feel of the urban gardens of that era (it has some pavilions dating back to those times, which are now waterside restaurants and cafés).
The Central Park has preserved its original structure, with three parallel tracks running through it. The central one was for carriages, while the two lateral ones were for people riding horses and walking, respectively. They were separated by greenery and small irrigation ditches joined by these cute little wooden bridges you can see in the pictures.
At opposite ends of the park you find two other Cluj landmarks.
On the west side are the stadium and sports pavilion (both quite large for a city of this size). Next to the stadium there is also an open air fair of traditional Transylvanian products.
At the other end, where the park meets the old town, there is this monument (below) dedicated to all those that opposed the Communist dictatorship. Notice the broken shackles and the fractured hammer and sickle, pretty strong symbolism here!
Grabbing some food on the go in Cluj
Since I was having all my meals at the conference I was attending, the gastronomic section is going to be quite limited this time.
However, I would like to share the coordinates of a small bakery where I stopped to have a bite during my sightseeing walk.
If you are just looking to eat something light and rest a bit while on the go, you can’t go wrong with this one!
Community Foods Bakery
Strada Regele Ferdinand 3
Cluj-Napoca 400110
Where to get the best views of Cluj
For a bird’s view of central Cluj you would need to climb up to Centatuia Hill, which overlooks the old town across the river. The most straightforward way to get there is to just walk uphill from the center, it’s a bit steep but, if you are in ok shape should not take more than 15-20min.
The Austro-Hungarians built a fortress on top of this hill (partly replacing the old city walls as a defensive stronghold), but almost nothing remains today of that.
On this spot, later on, the Communist regime built the “Transylvania Hotel”, which was later renamed as “Belvedere Hotel” because of the hill-top views.
This was the hotel of reference in Cluj during that era and it is still open to this day as a hotel, although today its interior today looks a bit like time-travel to the 1970s
Where to stay in Cluj
Here is the hotel recommendation for Cluj-Napoca:
Radisson Blu Hotel, Cluj
Aleea Stadionului 1
Cluj-Napoca 400372
This was the venue of the Aviation-Event conference and it was a rather pleasant stay.
The hotel is very modern and it has a nice location, at the western end of the Central Park, just opposite the stadium. Service was impeccable throughout.
