Bucharest rediscovered

You would do the capital of Romania an injustice if you confused it with Budapest or, worse still, dismissed it as a strange, mysterious, foreboding city outside the loop of regular tourism. Margaret Turton reports

Ceausescu's Parliament Palace.

Bucharest is fascinating. Reason being that very few cities can evoke such strong imagery of a recent communist regime plus – and this is the best bit – equally compelling imagery of a romanticised period in the 1930s and 40s when Bucharest, though fraught with other dangers, was at its peak and life was experienced to the full.

Many sights and monuments illustrate these two eras. There are also edifices harking back to earlier times when Bucharest’s location just north of the Danube made it one of the most exotic trading cities in south-east Europe.

Literary Bucharest

Those heady times are evident through Olivia Manning’s semi-autobiographical Balkan Trilogy, or the work of an American journalist R.G. Waldeck (also known as Countess Waldeck), whose book Athene Palace describes life in Bucharest at the beginning of WWII in intricate detail.

There is also Fortunes of War, a television series based on Manning’s works. Bucharest scenes were shot in the former Yugoslavia but the real backdrops exist, including the Athenee Palace hotel, now Athenee Palace Hilton.  

Who could forget Ronald Pickup’s character, Prince Yakimov, bursting through the revolving door of the Athenee Palace or lolling for inordinate periods of time in the marble-pillared lobby.

I too, spent a great deal of time loitering in the lobby, conjuring up images of events described by Waldeck, who lived on the first floor when she was filing stories for her New York publisher.
She describes spies, femme fatales, and characters similar to Manning’s Yakimov: wealthy refugees displaced as the German army spread eastward, the luggage and objets d’art, chandeliers, paintings, Aubusson carpets, all piling up in the lobby.

At their heels came the officers of the German military mission. Soon the big square outside the hotel resembled a German field camp and the elegant city became a stopover for German troops sweeping south. And Bucharest was the hotbed of intrigue.

Walk this way

The best way to get to know Bucharest is on foot.

Leave the lobby of the Athenee, turn left into the square and head for the Athenaeum, a concert hall known for its acoustics and a painted frieze illustrating scenes of Romanian life from Roman times to a recent monarchy.

Cross the square again to the old royal palace – now the National Art Museum – which displays the former royals’ art collections. These, and the view from the top of the spiral staircase near the Gallery of European Art, give a sense of King Carol II’s life before his forced abdication in 1940.

Diagonally opposite is the Central Committee of the Communist Party building. From its rooftop, President Nicolae Ceausescu fled by helicopter in 1989 after tens of thousands of irate citizens shouted ‘Down with Ceausescu’ from the square below.

Next door is the Central University Library, completely restored after catching fire in the demonstrations that led to the dictator’s execution and an end to the communist regime.

A few steps down Calea Victoriei Boulevard, the red-brick Eastern Orthodox Kretzulescu Church takes form. It was built by a wealthy Bucharest family in 1722.

Continue on to the elegant History Museum building. This holds the nation’s treasures, in particular vast hoards of gold objects illegally exported and recovered by the Romanian Government in 2006. Of interest are plaster casts of Trajan’s Column depicting Roman soldiers fighting Dacian warriors. The garments of the Dacians closely resemble those worn by Romanian mountaineers today. Not surprising. Romanians consider themselves descendents of both groups.

The old buildings are dwarfed by communist-era edifices designed to impress and intimidate, among them the curiously-named House of the Free Press and Ceausescu’s oversized Parliament Palace. And this brings me back to the glamorous atmosphere of Bucharest’s Golden Age when elegant, Parisian-inspired hotels, decor, boulevards and monuments, including an Arc de Triomphe, made this one
of the most spectacular capital cities
of Eastern Europe.

Margaret Turton was a guest of Viking River Cruises and Hilton.

Getting there: Scandinavian Airlines flies to Bucharest via Copenhagen. Visit: www.flysas.com.au

Stay: Athenee Palace Hilton, visit: www.hilton.com

For information: Romanian National Tourist Office; Visit: www.romaniatourism.com

More exploration: Viking River Cruises offers a pre-cruise itinerary to Bucharest followed by 15 days on the Danube visiting nine countries between Romania and Germany.
Visit: www.vikingrivercruises.com.au/rivercruises/europe-east-danube-germany-romania-2010/vpd/extensions.aspx?ext=BUC10