The past history
According to legend, the first settlement in the Bucharest area was the shepherd of Bucur’s huts. The number of cabins grew and a smaller town was formed here on the Dâmboviţa River north of the Danube.

There was no real city in the area that changed hands several times over time; Among other things, the area belonged to the first Bulgarian empire, which consisted of the year 681 to about the year 1000.

Up to 1368, the town had no name, and archaeological excavations do not show an urban settlement in the 1300s. In some places, early Bucharest is referred to as a citadel of Dâmboviţa, but this is also uncertain.

Count Dracula
The city of Bucharest is first mentioned in 1459, when the site was referred to as one of Vlad Țepeș’s residences. Vlad Țepeș was prince of Valacia and is also known as Count Dracula.

Vlad Țepeș became Valaky’s leader as a 25-year-old in 1456. His regime, which was subject to the Sultan of Istanbul, was characterized by discipline and harsh punishment on the people of the country. His reign was short, but he wrote a document granting the city of Bucharest commercial property rights, and the inhabitants obtained their first personal rights.

In the mid-1400s, Bucharest became the court’s favorite summer residence, and it was together with Târgovişte capital of Valakia. Furthermore, Bucharest was home to the probably strongest fortress in Valakiet, cementing the city’s position as one of the country’s leaders.

Bucharest, however, remained a smaller city, but through steady growth it gained greater importance in the country. The city’s location as a central trading point between Istanbul and Central and Northern Europe was of significant importance.

The 1500-1600s
Bucharest evolved steadily from the 1400s and the following århundereder happened much in the city. In the middle of the 16th century, Valakiet’s prince Mircea Ciobanul initiated several buildings; among others Curtea Veche, the new seat of the court. He also expanded the city’s defense with palisades, and during this time water supply and better food supply were also established for the inhabitants.

In the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans continually became a more important economic region due to its trade, and from the 1600s the center of gravity in Valakia was seriously moved to Bucharest. The preliminary culmination came in 1659, when noblemen formally chose to move the capital of Valakia from Targoviste to Bucharest.

The new status was the starting point for a large-scale expansion and flourishing in the city. The wealthy nobles moved to the capital, which should have a distinctive European feel.

A modern city was built with the paving of many streets, the construction of churches and various institutions. It was a renewed Bucharest that made up the country’s capital, and by the end of the 1600s it also had the country’s largest population.

The Wars against Turkey
From 1683, the Great Turkish War raged, consisting of a series of battles between the Turks in the Ottoman Empire and a number of European countries led by the German-Roman Empire and Russia, among others. The war ended with the signing of the Karlowitz Treaty in 1699, which was the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire and which fueled the Romanian struggle for independence.

Fantefan Cantacuzino led a revolt, and after that the Ottomans changed the administration of the Valacia from 1716. In the years 1768-1774, Russian troops stayed twice in the capital Bucharest; it was the same year the Russo-Ottoman war raged with Russia as victorious. A new war between Russia and the Turkish Ottomans broke out in 1787, and after the peace in 1792, Dniester became the Russian frontier.

The Russian-Turkish fighting weakened the Ottoman Empire, and the wars continued into the 19th century. Despite wars, epidemics, earthquakes, high taxation and other things, Bucharest continued to evolve these years. The population increased and the city was the absolute leader in the Romanian region.

19th Century Bucharest
The 19th century marked a marked century for Bucharest’s development, both economically and politically. The growing industrialization in Romania was strongest in Bucharest, expanding. The city’s significance increased when in 1859 it also became the capital of neighboring Moldova, whose former capital Iași is today one of Romania’s major provincial cities.

The larger area governed by Bucharest merely accelerated economic development. The first railroad opened in 1869 and went to the Danube river town of Giurgiu. Trams took to the capital’s streets, and new factories and residential areas shot up.

Culturally, the mid-19th century was also an important time. Despite the formally Ottoman supremacy, several Romanian institutions were established, such as the country’s new national theater, which opened its doors in 1852. Buildings around 1850 also gained momentum after the great fire that in 1847 destroyed about a third of the city’s houses.

Romanian Freedom
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Romania fought on Russia’s side against the Turkish Ottomans. On April 16, 1877, a treaty was signed in Bucharest. It secured Russia’s troops free passage through Romania in return to respect Romanian independence after a victory.

On May 21, 1877, Mihail Kogălniceanu read the Romanian Declaration of Independence in Bucharest Parliament, and the day after, Prince Carol signed the document officially securing the country’s independence. Romania immediately stopped tax payments to the Ottomans and the money was channeled to the War Department instead.

Romanian troops fought against the Turks asking for a ceasefire on January 19, 1878. The Turkish defeat resulted in international recognition of free Romania on July 13 of the same year. Three years later, the country became a kingdom with Carol I as Romanian king.

Bucharest around 1900
The cultural Bucharest and life in the city developed after independence and especially from the 1890s. The city was to have a touch that made it one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals, and the center was built after Parisian model with long wide boulevards and magnificent buildings. The city was nicknamed the Paris of the Balkans, and the atmosphere can continue to be felt on, for example, the central boulevard Calea Victoriei with distinguished shops, restaurants and mansion buildings. The name Calea Victoriei, Sejrsgaden, got it in 1918 in memory of Romania’s post-World War II rally.

Bucharest also got gas lights in the streets and two new railway stations were built. Horse-drawn trams began to run in the streets, and factories sprang up around the city that could also lend land to the country’s new National Bank, which opened in 1880.

The World Wars in the 20th Century
Romania, into the 20th century, remained primarily an agricultural country, and it was divided into a working rural population and the elite, most often in the capital. However, it was a period not only characterized by land idyll and hectic city life; in 1914, World War I broke out in Europe, and Romania became part of the war as well.

Romania entered World War I on the Allies’ side against the Central Powers, which consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. From August 1916 to the end of 1917, there were battles over large parts of the country and the territory that today make up Romania.

Due to the fall of the Russian tsar with the Russian Revolution, Russia withdrew from the war, which put Romania in an isolated position in the Balkans. The country had to conclude the peace in Bucharest on May 7, 1918. With the agreement, Romania had to surrender land to Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, and Germany should have access to the country’s rich oil sources. Peace was ratified in the country’s parliament, but King Ferdinand I refused to sign it. In November 1918, the Allies prevailed, and the peace in Bucharest was effectively abolished; formally it happened with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

In the decades following the end of World War I, Bucharest was constantly expanded and its elegant architecture nicknamed the Eastern Balkans. During King Carol II in the 1930s, the city and the country experienced strong economic growth, with a great deal of construction activity. Art deco and neo-human building style were the focus, and large plants sprang up all over the city.

The 1930s were also the time when the fascist government saw the light of day in Bucharest. It ended with Carol II appointing Ion Antonescu as prime minister to avoid a coup of Jerngarden. Carol II was forced from the throne a few days later and sent into exile while Romania approached Germany. The country’s troops thus fought on the German side in the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The war quickly went against Romania, which was attacked in August 1944 by the Red Army. Allied bombings partially destroyed the Romanian capital during the fighting.

King Mihai I led a coup against the Axis forces on August 23, 1944, thereby switching the country aside during the war to support the Allies’ struggle. In the final days and aftermath of the war, there was a showdown between royalists and supporters of the Romanian Communist Party that brought Petru Gorza to power as prime minister on March 6, 1945.

1945 to the present
In 1947, Romania officially switched to communist rule when it was declared a People’s Republic on 30 December. The reconstruction and development of the country then took off. Five-year plans for the construction of new industries, residential areas and large-scale modernization of agriculture were introduced.

For Bucharest, the communist regime meant a major expansion of the capital with new neighborhoods, not least consisting of apartment complexes for the city’s rapidly growing population. In the center were also built buildings and complexes in Soviet-inspired social realism, which can still be seen at, for example, the great Casa Presei Libere, where for many years stood a statue of the head of the Soviet Union Lenin.

In 1965, Nicolae Ceauşescu became leader in socialist Romania, and during his reign, large parts of central Bucharest changed during the same period that the Romanian capital was the subject of several other events. Bucharest thus hosted the UN Population Conference in 1974, and three years later, the city was hit by an earthquake, in which about 1,500 people perished, and large areas of the capital were destroyed.

Until the end of the 1980s, construction projects of unprecedented dimensions were carried out in Bucharest, which was done under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s leadership. The southern part of Bucharest’s old city was redeveloped and the boulevard to the Victory of Socialism was constructed as the city’s new splendor, ending at Europe’s largest building, the Palace of the People, which stands as Romania’s current parliament.

In 1989, Bucharest was the center of popular protests, as were several other Eastern European capitals. On December 21, Ceauşescu gave the speech that would be his last before he was dismissed. The one-party socialist state was over, and Bucharest and Romania then evolved toward a membership of the EU.

With an economic recovery around the year 2000, Bucharest experienced a boom in activity and construction, and on this occasion major cultural heritage restoration projects were also carried out for the benefit of citizens and tourists. By this time, the city’s population had exceeded two million, an increase from approximately 280,000 hundred years earlier.