Between 19-20th century the city had a great turn from a giant village with muddy streets to Eastern Europe’s most attractive destination, and getting the world’s reputation of being ‘The Little Paris’ . All it’s architecture was designed by French architects or Romanian architects, affiliates from the French school, and some results are still here with us today.
In the interwar period the city’s elegant architecture and the sophistication of its elite gave Bucharest the nickname of the “Little Paris of the East”. Although many buildings and districts in the historic centre were damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes and Nicolae Ceaușescu’s program of systematization, some of them managed to survive. The period between the two wars is often seen as the “golden age” of Bucharest’s architecture because during this time, the city grew significantly in size and wealth, starting to compete with other large European capitals such as Paris.
In the middle of the 1980s, the historical centre was preparing to make way for the dictator’s megalomaniacal building schemes, which involved constructing the second-largest building in the world, the “Palace of Parliament,” and remodelling the streets along the lines of North Korea’s grandiose avenues and with Calea Victoriei as its Champs-Élysées or Fifth Avenue.
