When in Romania...

Isabel Conway travelled to Bucharest and found a city that is determined to shake off the dreary horrors of its past

Almost 30 years on from the Romanian Revolution, Bucharest is a city transformed from the grey vistas of yesteryear
The Romanian Athenaeum concert hall was rebuilt at great expense in 1992

On Union Boulevard, one of Bucharest’s main thoroughfares, the dull morning brightens briefly when a cavalcade of shiny limos with their police escorts, sirens blaring, lights flashing, sweep past. Romania’s notorious president Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered Union Boulevard to be laid out exactly to the scale of the four kilometre long Champs-Elysées. Bucharest’s version of the famous Parisian landmark, which the megalomaniac dictator greatly ...