Afterwards, Bucharest, the undisputed economic and political center of the country, enters the century of Phanariot domination ? a century that is so heterogenous in point of personalities and achievements that a complete anlysis of it is still to be done. The first decades are, once more, dramatic: in February 1718 the city falls prey to a great fire; immediately after, a much too draughty summer results in famine, while the Turkish armies bring in the pest, as they had done before. A cynical observer could say that the epidemic was a democratic one, since Ioan Mavrocordat, the prince himself, perished because of it. Heavenly grace, invoked at church inaugurations (as, for instance, that of the Vacaresti Church, founded by Nicolae Mavrocordat, father of Ioan), did not show its face. In 1737, under the reign of Constantin Mavrocordat, the city was set on fire first by the Turks and then by the Tartars. A pest epidemic, caused again by the Turks, left behind approximately 10 thousand dead, while in 1738 a violent earthquake shook the foundations of the city. As if all that had not sufficed, in summer-time a locust invasion brought about the familiar spectre of the famine. A decade or so later, in 1756, a new pest epidemic settled in and in 1769 Turkish troops coming from the Danube area (in the context of the Turkish and Russian wars of the epoch) looted the city and set it on fire.

            However, Bucharest dwellers (or part of them) survived through all these events. The Phanariot prince Alexandru Ipsilanti (1774-1982) proved to be more dilligent than any of his predecessors in his concern to reorganise the city: not only did he build a new Princely Court, but a new delimitation of the city was thought of. Also, channels were built to mitigate the overflows of Dimbovita and several drinking water springs were channeled into the city. According to some sources, towards the close of his reign, the population of the city mounted to around 80 thousand inhabitants. Nicolae Caragea, Ipsilanti?s successor, was not as propitious to his contemporaries. On the one hand, he levied taxes (and he established thus a tradition) and on the other, the pest epidemic visited the city again. And such disasters will swarm in during the ensuing decades (Ion Caragea?s pest in 1813-4, with 70 thousand dead all over the country; famine in 1795; another earthqauke in 1802; another great fire in 1804; and the overflowing of Dimbovita in 1805), while the war was going on between the Turks and the Russians. The city and its dwellers clang on to life, again, and some of the residents of the 93 mahala* streets inventoried in 1798 would even find life charming. In November 1789, under the conditions of the Russian ? Austrian ? Turkish war, Bucharest is besieged by Austrian army forces, under the lead of the prince of Coburg. Several fancy balls thrown by local boyards followed, even if the sartorial differences between them and the Austrian officers still spoke of the East-West scision. In the summer of 1818, the mahala inhabitants were astonished to witness the first balloon to take off from the city ground; to them, the balloon bore a striking resemblance to the pig bladders that children would gonflate at Christmas time. That is why the balloon came to be historically known as ?Caragea?s bladder?.