Historical   Changing urban morphology of Bucharest 1368 - 1999. The city’s historical development. Bucharest is known to date as a settlement from the second half of the 14th century. Wallachia’s princes, or Voivodes, used both Tirgoviste and Bucharest as their capital but finally settled on Bucharest in 1659. The choice of Bucharest as a location for the Wallachian capital was probably based on the trading opportunities offered by the site which is on the convergence of trade routes from Istanbul. It illustrates the relative stability of the region at the time as Tirgoviste would have offered greater defensive characteristics through its location in the Sub-Carpathians. The city grew as its nobles (boyars) built churches and palaces and slowly it became a rambling commercial centre. In 1862 it was designated the capital of the new Romanian state. The ‘Paris of the East’. A period of development took place in the 1890s through to the years immediately following WW1. Boulevards were driven through the city on the pattern of Haussmann’s Paris. These boulevards followed north-south and east-west axes and were lined by impressive buildings designed by architects of the Parisian schools. great differences developed between the fashionable northern areas (villas, parks, boulevards, Arc de Triumph etc) and the poorly serviced areas around the town centre and to the south.