• Villas For Rent
• Apartments For Rent
• Rent a Car
• Museums in Bucharest
• Parks in Bucharest
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Airports

CISMIGIU PARK One of Bucharest's erstwhile parks is still enchanting visitors with its beauty. Cismigiu is the capital's oldest public garden. Its unique charm has won the hearts of the inhabitants of Bucharest who have strolled along its paths throughout the years. The main entrance into the 17-hectare park is along Regina Elisabeth Boulevard, guarded by the imposing building that house the capital's City Hall.
To the left is another boulevard, Schitu Magureanu. At the crossing of these two arteries one finds the National Gheorghe Lazar College, an ancient seat of culture. As one walks along Schitu Magureanu Boulevard, one reaches Magureanu Church, adjacent to the old secret entrance into the subterranean gardens. Cismigiu has yet another entrance along Stirbei Voda Boulevard, near Cretzulescu Palace, whose stone steps descend into the park. Around 1779, the Prince of Valachia, Alexandru Ipsilanti, desirous of good drinking water, ordered the construction of two fountains. The first was built near today's entrance on Stirbei Voda Boulevard, behind which the construction foreman and the great manager of public fountains (cismigiu in Romanian), Dumitru, built a house. From here comes the name of the park that is still used today, Cismigiu. Cismigiu was known as the Garden or Pool of Dura, the Merchant, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, and it was far greater then than it is today. Here was a mud pool, with subterranean springs, that never dried up. In it grew reeds and rush that provided protection for wild ducks. When it rained heavily and the Dambovita River over flowed, the waters of the Cismigiu ran as far as the walls of Sarindar Monastery, the site of today's National Military Circle. Around 1830, General Pavel Kiseleff, ordered Baron Borroczyn to dry up the pool and make a public garden.
This project was completed later, during the reign of Gheorghe Bibescu, by the Viennese landscape architect Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer. The talented and hard-working youth fairly fought a battle with Cismigiu's swamps, subduing these and managing to transform this unsightly place into a veritable jewel