Calea Victoriei: From Revolution to the River

Romanian Athenaeum

The city's round temple of music, opened in 1888 and home to the George Enescu Philharmonic.

You're standing in front of the Romanian Athenaeum, the round, domed concert hall that Bucharest built when it wanted to feel like a European capital. The French architect Albert Galleron designed it, and the money came from a public subscription that ran for decades under the slogan give a leu for the Athenaeum. Step inside when it's open and look up. The main hall is thirty meters across, ringed by boxes, and above them runs a fresco by Costin Petrescu that shows twenty-five scenes of Romanian history, from Trajan's conquest of Dacia to the Romania of 1918.

Downstairs, the circular foyer has twelve pink columns and stairs of Carrara marble. The organ you see was paid for by a campaign the composer George Enescu led, inaugurated in 1939 with 3,400 pipes. The hall nearly collapsed after decades of neglect, and a big restoration in the 1990s saved it.