Bucharest

Dracula-hunters arrive expecting fangs and turrets, only to find Vlad the Impaler reduced to a few medieval ruins tucked into the Old Town - Bucharest's real gothic drama happened on a different balcony, the one where Nicolae Ceaușescu's final speech turned, mid-sentence, into revolution.

The city once called itself Micul Paris – Little Paris of the East - and dressed its Ottoman bones in Belle Époque stone along Calea Victoriei, the Victory Way. Communism painted it grey. Then Revolution Square tore the costume off for good, and Bucharest has been rewriting its own face ever since.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the Victory Way past the Romanian Athenaeum – raised one leu at a time under the Un leu pentru Ateneu campaign - and into stories the guidebooks skip, like Mita Biciclista, the courtesan who scandalised high society by pedalling through it. In University Square, hear where students first shouted the regime down.

Plug in your earbuds and let Bucharest tell you which version of itself is true. You walk. The city talks back.