Bucharest & Muntenia

Muntenia is the larger, eastern part of Wallachia, the principality that took shape at the foot of the Carpathians in the 14th century. Its early princes ruled from Curtea de Argeș, where Basarab I and his successors built the princely court and church, and in 1330 Basarab defeated a Hungarian army at the battle of Posada. The capital later moved to Târgoviște, where Vlad III, the Impaler, ruled in the 1450s and 1460s; a document of his from 1459 is the first written record of Bucharest, which became the princes' main seat in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The late 17th century was a golden age under Constantin Brâncoveanu, who built palaces and monasteries in a new style blending Byzantine and Renaissance forms before the Ottomans executed him in Istanbul in 1714. A century of princes appointed from the Greek Phanar district of Istanbul followed. Bucharest grew into a cosmopolitan city of boyars' houses, merchants' inns and churches, and after the union of 1859 it became the capital of Romania.

Carol I, the German prince chosen in 1866, built his summer palace of Peleș at Sinaia, turning the Prahova Valley into a royal resort, while the oilfields around Ploiești made the region one of Europe's first petroleum centres — and a target for Allied bombers in 1943 and 1944. Under communism Bucharest was industrialised and partly rebuilt: after the 1977 earthquake Ceaușescu cleared much of the southern old city for his Civic Centre and palace. The 1989 revolution reached its climax in Bucharest, and since then the capital has pulled far ahead of the rest of the region in wealth.

Muntenians speak the variety of Romanian that became the standard language, and Bucharest sets the country's tone in politics, media, fashion and humour. The capital has a nickname from the interwar years, "Little Paris", and a real café culture, but also a Balkan side in its street food, its markets and the manele pop that plays from cars and weddings. Muntenia is also the home of the lăutari, the Roma musicians of the Danube plain, whose fiddle and cimbalom bands still play at family feasts.

The region is overwhelmingly Orthodox, and religious calendar days are observed closely: on 27 October huge queues form at Bucharest's Patriarchal Cathedral for the relics of St Dimitrie Basarabov, the city's patron saint. On 1 March men give women mărțișor, a small token on a red-and-white string, and on 9 March households make mucenici, small pastries of boiled or baked dough garnished with walnuts and sugar or honey.

The Brâncovenesc style — carved stone porches, arcaded loggias and painted interiors — is the region's architectural signature, and it was revived around 1900 as a national "neo-Romanian" style that marks many Bucharest villas and public buildings.

Bucharest has about 1.7 million residents, and more than two million people live in its metropolitan area, including the fast-growing suburbs of Ilfov. Ploiești, Pitești, Brăila and Buzău are the other main cities, each with over 100,000 people, while towns like Giurgiu, Alexandria, Slobozia and Călărași serve a flat, heavily agricultural plain of wheat, maize and sunflowers.

The capital produces a large share of Romania's economic output: banks, government, software and outsourcing companies, and a construction boom that has filled the north of the city with office towers. Pitești has the Dacia car factory at nearby Mioveni, owned by Renault; Ploiești still refines oil; Brăila and Giurgiu are Danube ports. The southern plain, by contrast, has lost many of its young people to Bucharest and to Western Europe.

Bucharest's days are long and car-choked. Commutes on the metro and the jammed boulevards are part of life, lunch is eaten fast at work, and evenings fill the terraces of the old centre and the parks of Herăstrău and Cișmigiu. Pressing local issues are traffic, earthquake-vulnerable apartment blocks marked with red discs, and the cost of housing; at weekends the city empties towards the Prahova Valley and the Black Sea.

Muntenia eats the classic Romanian repertoire — ciorbă sour soups, sarmale, mici from the grill — with a few specialities of its own. Buzău is known across the country for covrigi, ring-shaped pretzels sprinkled with salt or seeds, and for the spicy mutton sausages of Pleșcoi. On the Danube at Brăila fish is the staple: saramură, grilled carp or other river fish served in a garlic brine, and fish borș soured with fermented bran.

Everyday favourites in Bucharest include ciorbă de burtă, tripe soup finished with sour cream and garlic, and salată de boeuf, a festive salad of diced boiled vegetables, meat and pickles bound with mayonnaise served at Christmas and other celebrations. Old beer halls such as Caru' cu Bere opened in 1899, still serve beer in an Art Nouveau interior, and bakeries sell plăcintă pastries filled with cheese or apple.

The hills between Buzău and Prahova are Dealu Mare, one of Romania's most important wine areas, best known for its red wines. Argeș has the Ștefănești vineyards, and plum țuică is distilled across the Subcarpathian villages.

Bucharest is best walked along Calea Victoriei, from the old centre's Stavropoleos church and Manuc's Inn past the Romanian Athenaeum concert hall and Revolution Square to Piața Victoriei. The Palace of the Parliament can be toured, the National Museum of Art occupies the former royal palace, and the open-air Village Museum in Herăstrău park gathers farmhouses and churches from across the country. Just outside the city are Mogoșoaia Palace, Brâncoveanu's arcaded summer residence on a lake, and Snagov Monastery on its island, the legendary burial place of Vlad the Impaler.

The Prahova Valley climbs north from Ploiești. Sinaia has Peleș Castle, the neo-Renaissance royal palace of Carol I with the smaller Pelișor beside it, and Sinaia Monastery; cable cars rise from Sinaia and Bușteni to the Bucegi plateau, with the Babele and Sphinx rock formations and the Caraiman cross above Bușteni. Câmpina has the small Iulia Hasdeu Castle.

To the west, Târgoviște keeps the ruins of the princely court and its Chindia Tower. Curtea de Argeș has the 14th-century Princely Church of St Nicholas and the Curtea de Argeș Monastery, whose ornate 16th-century church holds the tombs of Romania's kings. North of it begins the southern approach to the Transfăgărășan, which passes the ruined fortress of Poienari, reached by about 1,480 steps, and the Vidraru dam and lake before climbing to the Făgăraș ridge. In the east, the mud volcanoes of Buzău county bubble on a bare, grey hillside.