Current Time in Sector 4, Romania

Sector 4 is one of the six administrative districts into which Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is divided. It covers the southern part of the city, reaching from the historic centre near Piața Unirii out to the residential quarters of Berceni and the edge of the ring road. The land here is flat, part of the great Wallachian Plain, and the Dâmbovița River marks the northern boundary of the sector. The climate is continental, with hot dry summers, cold winters and short, pleasant transitional seasons.

Around three hundred thousand people live in Sector 4, within a capital of nearly two million. The district combines nineteenth century streets close to the centre with vast estates of apartment blocks built during the socialist decades, and in recent years with new residential and office developments. Its population is largely made up of working families and young professionals, and rents and property prices have traditionally been lower than in the northern half of the city.

Historically this was the direction in which Bucharest looked towards the Danube and the Balkans, and the old roads to Giurgiu and Olteniţa still run through the sector. The area contained monasteries, orchards and market gardens, and the Văcărești Monastery, an eighteenth century foundation regarded as one of the finest examples of Romanian Brâncovenesc architecture, stood here until it was demolished in the 1980s during the reshaping of the city.

The most remarkable place in the district today grew out of that same episode. An enormous basin excavated for a reservoir that was never completed was gradually colonised by reeds, willows, birds and small mammals, and the resulting Văcărești Nature Park, protected since 2016, is now an urban wetland of some two hundred hectares in the middle of the capital, with observation points, walking routes and well over a hundred bird species. It is often described as one of the largest urban natural parks in Europe.

Tineretului Park, a large landscaped space with lakes, an ice rink and the Palace of Children, is the main recreational area, while Bellu Cemetery is the most important necropolis in Romania, the resting place of the poet Mihai Eminescu, the playwright Ion Luca Caragiale and many other national figures, with sculpture and funerary architecture of high quality. Close to Piața Unirii stand the Radu Vodă and Bucur churches, the Antim Monastery lies nearby, and the enormous Palace of Parliament dominates the skyline just across the sector boundary.

Transport is good. Metro line M2 runs the length of the district from Berceni to the centre, trams and buses cover the surface network, and the southern approach to the airport and the motorway to Bulgaria begins here.

Several faculties, technical high schools and private colleges operate in the sector, with Bucharest's main universities a short journey away.

Sector 4 is important as a large part of the Romanian capital where socialist era housing, historic churches, a national cemetery and an unexpected wilderness exist side by side.