Palatul "Crețulescu"

Crețulescu Palace is one of the most elegant boyar residences in Bucharest, raised between 1902 and 1904 to the designs of the renowned architect Petre Antonescu, in French Renaissance style with Baroque accents, with richly ornamented facades and an aristocratic silhouette. It was commissioned by Elena Crețulescu, a descendant of two great boyar families, on land she had inherited on Strada Știrbei Vodă, at the edge of the Cișmigiu Gardens, one of the most privileged locations in the city.

The palace's fate tells a typically Bucharest story: in debt, Elena Crețulescu sold it to the City Hall in 1927, and from 1972 to 2011 the building housed UNESCO's European Centre for Higher Education (CEPES), becoming a landmark of international academic life. Today it remains a first-rank architectural monument, admired above all from the outside, for its lace-like façades and its privileged position at one of the gates of Cișmigiu.

Good to know

• It stands on Strada Știrbei Vodă, beside Cișmigiu Park, in the area between the centre and Gara de Nord, easy to include in a walk through the park.
• As an institutional building, it is mostly seen from outside — admire the façade, the ornamentation and the carved details.
• The nearest metro station is Izvor or Universitate, a few minutes' walk away.

With a 4.5 rating, Crețulescu Palace is one of those buildings you can easily walk past without noticing — and which, once you have really looked at it, you never forget. A natural stop on a walking tour of the centre, especially combined with a stroll through Cișmigiu.