Macca-Villacrosse Passage

Step inside and look up: a yellowish glass roof, façades with iron balconies and a passage that curves like a horseshoe. You are in the Macca-Villacrosse Passage, completed in 1891 to a design by the architect Felix Xenopol.

1Two branches and a horseshoe

Its two branches leave Calea Victoriei, join up and come out on Strada Eugeniu Carada, next to the National Bank. Its odd shape has an explanation: in the middle of the block stood a hotel, the Stadt Pesth, and the passage was built around it. Before that, the plot was occupied by the Villacrosse inn.

The name combines two people. Xavier Villacrosse was the city's chief architect in the 1840s and 1850s, and Mihalache Macca was the developer's brother-in-law. After 1989 the passage got its original name back, and its small shops gave way to cafés and restaurants.

2The street of Victory

The street you came along is Bucharest's most elegant avenue. At the end of the 17th century Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu laid it out as a road paved with oak beams leading to his palace at Mogoșoaia: it was Podul Mogoșoaiei, the Mogoșoaia «bridge». In 1878, after the War of Independence, it was given its current name, Calea Victoriei. Between the wars it was where the elite who had made the city «Little Paris» came to stroll: cafés, theatres, milliners and French bookshops.

3What to look for

• The glass roof covering the whole passage.
• The rotunda where the two branches meet, with its stained glass.
• The wrought-iron balconies on the inner façades.