Bucharest City
Bucharest is the capital of Romania. With just over 1.8 million inhabitants and an urban agglomeration of 2.2 million inhabitants, it is the seventh largest city in the European Union.
After Bucharest finally replaced Târgovişte as the state capital in 1659, it became the political, economic and cultural center of Wallachia and later Romania. The city has several universities, various other colleges, and numerous theaters, museums, and other cultural institutions.
The high cosmopolitan culture and dominant French influence of the city’s neo-baroque architecture earned it the nickname of Little Paris (“Little Paris”, and “Paris of the East”). During the tenure of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, extensive historic neighborhoods were destroyed to make way for the confectionary-style monument of the head of state.