Qualla: Bucharest https://qualla.com/bucharest en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bucharest https://qualla.com/bucharest Bucharest: Introduction https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Mihai Petre, CC BY-SA 3.0. In Romanian, the word stem bucurie means joy. The legend says a shepherd named Bucur founded a settlement on the banks of the Dambovita and gave it his name, so that in Romanian Bucuresti carries the buried sense of city of joy. The legend is probably half-true, half-made up. The shepherd may have lived; he may not. Either way, the city he supposedly founded has been called many things since the first written mention of it in 1459 - Little Paris, the Paris of the East, the most utopian Communist project this side of Pyongyang, a shopping mall economy, a tech boom. The joy in the name keeps surfacing, even after the worst of the demolitions.

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Image: Mihai Petre | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bucharest: Vlad's Citadel, Then a Capital https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Nicubunu, CC BY-SA 3.0 ro. The city first appears in writing as the Citadel of Bucuresti in 1459, a fortified seat for the ruler of Wallachia. That ruler, in the same year, was Voivode Vlad III - the man Western Europe would later remember as Dracula and Romanians remember as Vlad the Impaler, defender of ...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-vlads-citadel-then-a-capital.mp3 0:06 2 full Bucharest: Paris of the East https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Neoclassicism Enthusiast, CC BY-SA 4.0. The decades between unification and the world wars were Bucharest's belle epoque. Gas lamps lit the Calea Victoriei, which Romanian writers liked to call their Champs-Elysees. Horse-drawn trams clattered through the lower town. The Romanian Athenaeum opened in 1888, with its dome...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-paris-of-the-east.mp3 0:06 3 full Bucharest: What Ceausescu Took https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Pudelek (Marcin Szala), CC BY-SA 3.0. Then came the second shock, slower and more deliberate. Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1965, and after a 1971 visit to North Korea he returned with ideas. The 1977 earthquake centered in Vrancea, 135 kilometres away, claimed 1,500 lives and gave him a pretext. In the 1980s hi...

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Image: Pudelek (Marcin Szala) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-what-ceausescu-took.mp3 0:06 4 full Bucharest: After the Revolution https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. In December 1989 the protests that began in Timisoara reached Bucharest, and within days the regime collapsed. Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day. The Memorial of Rebirth, a marble pillar unveiled in 2005, marks the moment - locals nicknamed it the olive ...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-after-the-revolution.mp3 0:06 5 full Bucharest: Layers, Visible and Buried https://qualla.com/bucharest/ Photo credit Britchi Mirela, CC BY-SA 3.0 ro. Today's Bucharest is layered like archaeological strata. In the centre, restored nineteenth-century arcades like the Pasajul Macca-Vilacrosse open onto cobbled streets where Vlad the Impaler's court once stood. A few blocks away, the Palace of the Parliament squats on its raw con...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/bucharest-wp/sxfs-bucharest-layers-visible-and-buried.mp3 0:06 6 full