A quiet, leafy district on the hill west of the centre, built around the medieval Cotroceni monastery and the late-19th-century royal palace that is now the seat of the Romanian President. The neighbourhood was laid out in the early 1900s as villa quarters for the bourgeoisie, and many of the original Art Nouveau and neoromanian houses survive.
Cotroceni is not on the standard tourist route, which is half its charm. Walk up from the Carol Davila medical campus through streets of small gardens and stained-glass-fronted houses, end at the palace, and double back via the botanical garden to round out a half-day. The cafés around Piața Cotroceni and Bulevardul Eroilor Sanitari are good and almost entirely local.