A fork-shaped, glass-roofed arcade in pale yellow stucco, built in 1891 and modelled on the great covered passages of Milan and Paris. The arcade was once lined with banks and luxury shops — the Bucharest Stock Exchange operated from one wing — and although the original tenants have long since gone, the architecture is intact and the atmosphere unmistakably late-19th-century European.
These days the passage is filled with shisha lounges and middling cafés that spill tables onto the tiled floor. The hookah crowd is part of the charm; come in the late afternoon when the yellow glass catches the light, order a coffee, and look up. It is the kind of accidentally beautiful Bucharest moment that the Communist demolitions came close to erasing.