History of Bucharest

[14] The theory identifying Bucharest with a "Dâmbovița citadel" and pârcălab mentioned in connection with Vladislav I of Wallachia (in the 1370s)[15] is contradicted by archaeology, which has shown that the area was virtually uninhabited during the 14th century.

[18] In 1476, it was sacked by the Moldavian Prince Stephen the Great, but was nonetheless favoured as a residence by most rulers in the immediately following period[19] and was subject to important changes in landscape under Mircea Ciobanul, who built the palace and church in Curtea Veche (the court's area), equipped the town with a stockade, and took measures to provide Bucharest with fresh water and produce (early 1550s).

[28] Constantin Șerban added important buildings to the landscape, but he was also responsible for a destructive fire which was meant to prevent Mihnea III and his Ottoman allies from taking hold of an intact citadel.

[33] In 1716, following the anti-Ottoman rebellion of Ștefan Cantacuzino in the context of the Great Turkish War, Wallachia was placed under the more compliant rules of Phanariotes, inaugurated by Nicholas Mavrocordatos (who had previously reigned over Moldavia).

[36] In 1737, during the Austro-Turkish War of 1737–39, the city was again attacked by Habsburg troops and ransacked by the Nogais, before suffering another major plague outbreak (followed by new outbursts in the 1750s), accompanied by a relative economic decline brought about by the competition between Greek, Levantine and locals for official appointments.

[41] During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12, Russian troops under Mikhail Andreyevich Miloradovich entered the city to reinstate Constantine Ypsilantis in late December 1806;[42] it was under the latter's rule that Manuc's Inn had been built by Emanuel Mârzaian.

[43] Sources of the time indicate that the city alternated dense agglomerations with large privately owned gardens and orchards, a pattern which made impossible the task of calculating its actual area.

[44] The Greek War of Independence and the contemporary Wallachian uprising brought Bucharest under the brief rule of the pandur leader Tudor Vladimirescu (March 21, 1821), and was then occupied by the Filiki Eteria forces of Major General Alexander Ypsilantis – before seeing the violent Ottoman reprisals (ending in a massacre during August, one which made over 800 victims).

[45] The following non-Phanariote reign of Grigore IV Ghica, acclaimed by the Bucharesters upon its establishment, saw the building of a Neoclassical princely residence in Colentina, the expulsion of foreign clergymen who had competed with Wallachians for religious offices, and the restoration of bridges over the Dâmbovița River, but also high taxes and a number of fires.

[47] After the short governorship of Pyotr Zheltukhin came the prolonged and profoundly influential term of Pavel Kiselyov (November 24, 1829 – 1843), under whom the two Principalities were given their first document resembling a constitution, the Regulamentul Organic (negotiated in Wallachia's capital).

[53] The new prince Gheorghe Bibescu completed a water supply network and works on public gardens, began constructing the National Theater of Romania building (1846; finished in 1852) and improved the chaussées linking Bucharest with other Wallachian centers.

[56] The new executive, backed by popular shows of support on Filaret field which reunited the Bucharest middle class with peasants from the surrounding area (June 27, August 25), passed a series of radical reformist laws that drew the animosity of Tsar Nicholas I, who pressured the Porte to crush the Wallachian movement; the proposed land reform also led a group of boyars, headed by Ioan Solomon, to attack and arrest the government on July 1 – the effects of this gesture were cancelled on the same day by the inhabitants' reaction and the Ana Ipătescu-led attack on the building occupied by conspirators.

[57] Sultan Abdülmecid I, sympathetic to the anti-Russian scope of the revolt, pressured the revolutionaries to accept a relatively minor change in the executive structure – the Provisional Government ceded position to a more moderate regency (Locotenența Domnească), which was, nevertheless, not recognized by Russia.

[59] On September 18, revolutionary crowds swept into the Interior Ministry, destroyed the lists of assigned boyar ranks and privileges, and forced Neofit to cast an anathema over the Organic Statute: such measures made Fuat Pasha lead Ottoman troops into Bucharest, a move which only met resistance from a group of firemen stationed on Dealul Spirii (who engaged in a shootout after an incident which they perceived as provocation).

The welcoming of Russian intervention by Bucharesters at the start of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 contributed to the Ottoman decision to bombard the left bank of the Danube, as Romania's independence was being proclaimed by Parliament.

At the climax of the World War I Romanian Campaign on December 6, 1916, Bucharest was placed under the military occupation of the Central Powers (while the government retreated to Iași).

Under King Carol II, the city skyline began changing, and numerous art deco- and Neo-Romanian-style buildings and monuments were added, including the new Royal Palace, the Military Academy, Arcul de Triumf, the University of Bucharest Faculty of Law, the new main wing of Gara de Nord, the ANEF Stadium, the Victoria Palace, Palatul Telefoanelor, Dimitrie Gusti's Village Museum, and the present-day Museum of the Romanian Peasant;[75] deep pits were dug to provide Bucharest with safer water, alongside the deviation of the southern course of the Argeș River and the sanitation of the northern lakes (Colentina, Floreasca, Herăstrău, Tei), eventually leading to the creation of the present-day "necklace" of embanked ponds and surrounding parks.

In February 1945, the Romanian Communist Party organized a protest in front of the Royal Palace, which witnessed violence and ended in the fall of the Nicolae Rădescu cabinet and the coming to power of the Communist-backed Petru Groza.

One of the major landscape interventions by early Communist leaders was the addition of Socialist realist buildings, including the large Casa Scînteii (1956) and the National Opera.

As a tendency for the entire period of Communist rule, the city underwent massive geographical and populational expansion: it began extending, westwards, eastwards and southwards, with new, tower block-dominated districts such as Titan, Militari, Pantelimon, Dristor, and Drumul Taberei.

Alongside buildings characterised by a continuation of Socialist realism, Bucharest was home to several large-scale ones of a more generic modernist style (Sala Palatului, the Globus Circus, and the Intercontinental Hotel).

[78] By the time it was toppled, the regime had begun constructing a series of huge identical markets, commonly known as "hunger circuses", and started digging the never-finished Danube–Bucharest Canal.

It was the country's deadliest-ever nightclub fire, the city's (and one of Romania's) worst accidental losses of life since the end of the civil war in 1989, and one of the deadliest incidents of any kind since that time.

Trading guilds became predominant over those of artisans during the 19th century, and all autochthonous ones collapsed under competition from the sudiți wholesale traders (protected by foreign diplomats), and disappeared altogether after 1875, when mass-produced imports from Austria-Hungary flooded the market.

[85] Phanariote rulers consecrated several major places of worship, including, among others, the Văcărești Monastery (1720), a monumental late-Byzantine site, the Stavropoleos Church (1724) – both built under Nicholas Mavrocordatos -, Popa Nan (1719), Domnița Bălașa (1751), the one in Pantelimon (1752), Schitu Măgureanu (1756), Icoanei (1786), and Amzei (ca.1808).

Jews were first attested as shop owners under Mircea Ciobanul (ca.1550), and despite frequent[citation needed] persecutions and pogroms, formed a large part of the professional elites for most of Bucharest's history, and the largest percentage of the total population after Romanians (around 11%).

[88] In World War II, Jews were the target of widespread violence during the National Legionary State regime and, many were attacked and had their property looted, while others were eventually killed.

A certain number of local Jews were deported to Transnistria by the Ion Antonescu regime, but most of them remained on the spot, being forcefully assigned to labor duties like cleaning out snow, sorting out the debris resulting from Allied bombings etc.

Majority-Eastern Orthodox groups other than Romanians included sizeable communities of Greeks (a highly influential and omnipresent one for much of the city's history, it was mentioned in Bucharest as early as 1561 and, after reaching its peak in the 18th century, entered a process of regression), Aromanians (first attested in 1623, but probably counted among the Greeks by previous testimonials), Serbs and Bulgarians, alongside other South Slavs (Bulgarians and Serbs were confounded in common reference until the 19th century; at the same time, sources more readily distinguished between groups of traders from Gabrovo, Chiprovtsi, or Razgrad; an important group of Bulgarians retreated with the Russians at the close of the war of 1828–1829, and settled in Bucharest as gardeners and milkmen), as well as Arab parishioners of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, Russians (see also Bucharest Russian Church), and most of the Albanians present.