From 1883 the Orient Express connected Western Europe to the Romanian capital of Bucharest. The city did not yet have an appealing, centrally located railway station; instead the Gara de Nord (North Station) of 1872 served as a terminus.

In 1894 French architect Alexandre Marcel won a design contest for a new central railway station.

His spectacular design was never realized, though. A 1911 plan by the Romanian architect Victor Stefanescu came to nothing either.

The North Station was extended step by step and modernized in the 1930s. Bucharest never got a real central station.