Travel Postcard: 48 hours in Bucharest for architecture buffs

By Justyna Pawlak

BUCHAREST (Reuters Life!) - Got 48 hours to explore Bucharest, with its rare mixture of western architectural ideas, eastern imagery and 20th century totalitarian megalomania?

Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors map the city's shift from one of Europe's most progressive urban centres at the start of the 20th century to a chaotic maze of dusty boulevards and quaint neighbourhoods bearing the scars of brutal communist policies.

FRIDAY

4 p.m. - Follow road signs for historic centre, but watch out, it's easy to miss. Nestled between two major avenues, the medieval merchant district of Lipscani is in fact a tiny fraction of Bucharest's former old city.

Its meandering, cobblestoned streets survived demolitions ordered by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1980s that buried Bucharest's oldest sections, or a fifth of the city.

After massive renovations in recent years, Lipscani teems with bars and restaurants and is a popular weekend hangout for the city's partygoers.

Stop for a drink but make sure to wander into one of the side streets. Lined with tiny textile or antique shops, the crumbling tenements bear witness to communist-era neglect.