Bucharest

Bucharest grew on the wooded plain of Wallachia between the Dâmbovița and the Colentina, a small town on the road to the Danube port of Giurgiu, where an Ottoman garrison stood. It first appears in a charter of Vlad the Impaler dated 21 September 1459, as the Citadel of the Dâmbovița, and in 1465 Radu the Handsome chose it as a princely residence. Prince Mircea Ciobanul built the Princely Church at the Old Court in 1558–59, the oldest place of worship in the city that survives in its original form.

In 1659 the Ottomans made Bucharest the capital of Wallachia, preferring a seat on the plain near the Danube that they could control more easily than Târgoviște. The first streets were paved with river stone in 1661. From the 18th century the sultans appointed Greek Phanariot princes, who ruled until the uprising of 1821. Habsburg troops held the city in 1716, 1737 and 1789, Russian forces three times between 1768 and 1806, and plague struck in 1813–14. Merchants built inns such as Manuc's Inn along the muddy streets.