Why it looks like this

Old Bucharest grew organically around churches and merchant lanes, a low city of courtyards nicknamed 'Little Paris' for its 19th-century boulevards. Then, in the 1980s, dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu bulldozed several square kilometres of the historic centre — churches, monasteries, thousands of homes — to build his Civic Centre.

Its spine is Bulevardul Unirii, a monumental avenue aimed straight at the colossal Palace of the Parliament. The map still shows the graft: a rigid axis of giant blocks pushed through a city of winding streets.