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According to legend, Bucharest was founded by a shepherd called Bucur , who built a settlement amid the Vlasia forest. It was recorded as a nameless "citadel on the Dâmbovita" in 1368, and named as Bucharest in an edict from the time of Vlad the Impaler. Over the centuries, both Târgoviste and Bucharest have served as the Wallachian capital, but Bucharest finally secured its claim in 1659 - its location at the convergence of the trading routes to Istanbul outweighing the defensive advantages of Târgoviste's location in the Carpathian foothills.

As the boyars (nobles) moved into the city they built palaces and churches on the main streets radiating from the centre; these streets were surfaced with timber baulks and known as "bridges" ( pod ). Despite earthquakes and periodic attacks by Turks, Tatars, Austrians and Russians over the course of its history, the city continued to grow and to modernize. New boulevards were driven through the existing street pattern in the 1890s, after the style of Haussmann's Paris, and they still form a ring road and the main north-south and east-west axes of the city. Most of the major buildings, such as the Romanian Athenaeum and the Cercul Militar , were designed by French or French-trained architects and built in the years before World War I. By 1918 the city's population had grown to 380,000 and roads such as Podul Mogosoaiei, Podul de Pamânt and Podul Calacilor were widened, paved and renamed as the Calea Victoriei, Calea Plevnei and Calea Rahovei, in honour of the battles of the 1877-78 War of Independence from Turkey.

After World War II the city was ringed with ugly apartment buildings, first in areas such as "Red" Grivita, which the Allies had bombed flat (aiming for the rail yards), then expanding into the surrounding countryside; the population doubled from one to two million. In 1984, Ceausescu set out to impose his megalomaniac vision on the city, demolishing most of the area south of the centre to create a new Centru Civic which remains unfinished and seems likely to scar the city for many years yet