Bucharest Half-Day Guided Bike Tour

Bucharest Old Town

Bucharest's Old Town, around Lipscani Street, is where the city began. The first written mention of Bucharest dates from 1459, and the ruins of the Old Princely Court still stand here among streets named after the merchants and craftsmen who once worked in them. Today the area is full of restored nineteenth-century facades, small Orthodox churches and old merchants' inns.

Your bike tour starts here, with the story of the city's birth and of Romanian civilisation. During the communist years parts of the historic centre were cleared for grand building projects, and your guide explains what was lost and what survived. The Old Town is also the best place to return to after the ride for a meal and a walk.

Palace of the Parliament

The Palace of the Parliament is one of the largest administrative buildings in the world, so big that it is hard to take in from the ground. Construction began in 1984 under the communist regime, and a large part of the historic Uranus district, including houses, churches and monasteries, was cleared to make room for it and for the new civic centre around it.

From the bike you see its enormous white facade and learn what it cost the city and its people, both in money and in history. Today it houses Romania's parliament and several museums. If you want to see the inside, the Palace of the Parliament tours run separately and need booking with ID; this bike tour gives you the outside view and the story.

Communist-era Bucharest

The ride continues through the districts built or reshaped in the 1970s and 1980s, with wide boulevards, fountains and long rows of identical apartment blocks. The main axis leading to the palace was designed to be longer than the Champs-Élysées, as a symbol of the new socialist capital, and some old churches were moved on rails and hidden behind new buildings so they would survive.

Your guide describes everyday life in those years: queues for food, cold flats and strict control, until the revolution of December 1989. Riding through a former communist neighbourhood brings this history to life in a way a museum cannot, and it is one of the reasons people rate this Bucharest bike tour so highly.

Calea Victoriei and 'Little Paris'

Calea Victoriei is Bucharest's oldest and most elegant avenue, named in 1878 after Romania's victory in its war of independence. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the city was known as Little Paris, wealthy families and the state built palaces, banks and concert halls here in French styles.

As you ride along the avenue you pass monumental buildings from this golden age, with domes, columns and stone carving, such as the Romanian Athenaeum concert hall and the grand bank palaces near the Old Town. The guide also points out landmarks from the 1989 revolution. It is a fitting end to a ride that shows how many different faces Bucharest has, before you return to the start point.