Bucharest has 37 museums, 22 theaters, opera houses and concert halls, 18 art galleries, lots of libraries and bookstores.
Sights: Architecture of the Historic Center: Calea Victoriei, Piata Palatului, Bulevardul Bratianu, Bulevardul Regina Elisabeta, Strada Lispcani, Piata Romana, Piata Victoriei, Bulevardul Aviatorilor, Soseaua Kiseleff, Bulevardul Dacia, Muzeul Satului (Village Museum), Catedrala Patriarhala, Cismigiu (Park).

Museums

The National Art Museum in Bucharest offers a collection of 70,000 works divided into two major sections. Its "National Gallery" features the work of major Romanian artists, including Brancusi, Grigorescu, Amman and Andrescu, while its "World Gallery" presents works by Western masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco, Renoir and Cezanne.

Bucharest's Village Museum of Folk Art, about one square mile in size, is a fascinating outdoor museum that displays more than 300 wooden and stone buildings that reflect the history and diversity of Romania's rural architecture and design from all regions of the country.

The History Museum of Romania, housed in what was once Bucharest's main post office, presents a collection of artifacts adn jewelry that date from prehistoric to modern times.

The Village Museum - one of the world's most interesting ethnographical parks in open air. Founded in 1936 by Dimitrie Gusti, this museum illustrates the perpetual spring of surprising originallity. The house and householding samples gathered from all regions of the country are exhibited according to ethnographical areas. The permanent exhibition of the museum, set out on a 10 hectars ground, includes dwelling houses and annex constructions (stables, barns and storehouses, summer kitchens and granaries, stalls and hen coops), gates with archways, wells, crosses and wooden and stone roadside crucifixes, old wooden churches with pointed cupolas, artisan's workshops and installations with popular industrial mechanisms, thus illustrating the achievements of the Romanian people in the fields of popular architecture and decorative art, as well as its technical-artisan's ingenuity.

The Romanian Peasant Museum, 
The almost 90,000 exhibits which belong to the patrimony of this museum constitute the richest folk art collection in Romania. This genuine treasuree of national and international interest is being stored in keeping with rigorous scientific criteria. Practical reasons and preservation rules led to the division of this patrimony into following collections:

ceramics 918,000 objects),
folk costumes (20, 000 objects),
textiles and tissues for indoors use (10,000 objects),
wood, furniture and metalwork (8,000 objects),
carpets (2,500 objects),
customs (8,000 objects),
samples (5,000 objects),
liturgical exhibits (3,000 objects, with the six wooden churches preserved "in situ" or displayed on the museum premises) and foreign countries
(4,000 objects), with items acquired based on previously established international exchanges.
Among other awards, this institution received the "European Museum of the Year 1996" prize.

The Museum of Art Collections, which presents major works by Romanian and foreign artists from a number of private collections, The Natural History Museum, The George Enescu Museum in memory of the famed Romanian composer (1881-1995), and the Astronomic Observatory.

Major museums in Bucharest include: National Museum of Art, Art Collections Museum, Museum of the City if Bucharest, National History Museum, Cotroceni Palace Museum, City Museum of Astronomy, National Military Museum, Minovici Museum of Ancient Western Arts, Village Museum, Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Natural History Museum, Museum of the Romanian Music, History Museum of the Jewish Comunity, Museum of the Armenian Community.

The Cotroceni Palace was built as a monastery by Serban Cantacuzino in 1679-82 and served as base for the Austrian army in 1737, the Russian army in 1806, and Tudor Vladimirescu's rebels in 1821. Damaged by many fires and earthquakes over the course of its history, the original building was demolished in 1863 and the palace rebuilt in 1893-95 to provide a home for the newly wed Prince Ferdinand and Princess Marie. Under Communism it served as the "Palace of the Pioneers" - the Soviet-bloc equivalent of the Scouts. A new south wing was added during restoration following the 1977 earthquake, and this is now the presidential residence. In 1984 the church was demolished. Enter the palace by a small door in the north wall at Sos. Cotroceni 37 (Tues-Sun 9am-3.30pm; advance booking necessary tel 01/221 1200). Tours first pass through the remains of the monastery, where the Cantacuzino family gravestones are kept, then through the new rooms from the 1893-95 rebuild, decorated in an eclectic variety of Western styles.

The Parliament House
(1984-1989), is the most grandious administrative construction in Europe, that includes hundreds of officies, reception rooms, rooms for scientific manifestations, cultural, social-politics and conference rooms. With a 265.000 mp interior area, its on the second place on the world after the Pentagon in Washignton and on the third place according to the volume, after the Cape Canaveral (USA).

Orthodox Churches
Among the rows of new buildings that make up the Centru Civic are hidden the various tiny Orthodox churches reprieved from demolition. In Bucharest you'll frequently find churches in incongruous places - such as the courtyards of apartment buildings - where the city planners have built around them, but here the churches seem even more disregarded and incongruous than elsewhere. The most striking example of this is the Sf Nicolai-Mihai Voda Church , built by Michael the Brave in 1591; to make way for the Centru Civic development, the church was moved 279m east on rails, to Str. Sapientei 4, and dumped on what now appears to be a building site. The church's medieval cloisters and ancillary buildings were demolished. What's more, as it's now standing on a concrete platform, the church will probably collapse when the next earthquake comes. The largely seventeenth-century Sf Apostoli Church is nearby at Str. Sf Apostoli 33A, while just west of the Piata Unirii, at Calea Rahovei 3, is the eighteenth-century Domnita Balasa Church ; one of the most popular churches in the city, with an excellent choir, it was only saved from demolition by UNESCO funds.
On the southern side of Bulevardul Unirii, at Str. Justitiei 64, is Antim Monastery , a surprisingly large, walled complex dating from 1715 with a high-domed church and a small chapel, but minus half its eastern wing. At the top of Dealul Mitropoliei stands the Patriarchal Cathedral , built in 1655-68, with a later campanile designed by Brâncoveanu and some older stone crosses with Slavonic inscriptions. Alongside are the Patriarchal Palace (built in 1875), and the former Palace of the Chamber of Deputies (1907). There are other churches on this side of Bulevardul Dimitrie Cantemir, including Sf Spiridon Nou (1768), at Calea Serban Voda 29, which holds Tattarescu paintings dating from 1858. Just east on Bulevardul Marasesti, by the Dâmbovita, is the Bucur Monastery (1743), in front of the Radu Voda Church (also known as Holy Trinity or Sf Treime), founded in 1568, which was once the richest monastery in the country with 8342 properties.

Shopping

The new Bucharest Mall on Calea Vitan is Romania's first western-style shopping mall
Unirea market  Unirea Shopping Center is one of Romania's best shopping destinations, featuring more than 200 shops, boutiques, eating & leisure places