King Mihai I Park — still called Herăstrău by most Bucharestians, a habit that outlasted the 2017 renaming in honour of Romania's last monarch — is the city's grandest green lung, sprawling across more than 180 hectares along the northern shore of a shimmering lake of the same name. Created in the 1930s as part of an ambitious urban redesign that drained a marshy floodplain, it represents Bucharest at its most aspirational: wide promenades, weeping willows trailing into the water, and a skyline framed by the glass towers of the business district beyond. It feels simultaneously like a city park and a proper escape, which is a rare thing to pull off.
Park