There’s no better place to visit in Romania than Ceausescu Mansion to understand the double standards of the communist regime or the absurd cult of personality of one of its most ruthless dictators. Opened in 2016 for visitors, Ceausescu Mansion was back in the dark and freezing communist days one of the best-kept secrets of the regime. Only the closest members of the family and the highest rank party members had access to Ceausescu’s residence. Why all the secrecy you wonder if he was ‘the first son of the nation’ who was guiding Romania to the ‘Golden Age’?

The House of the Free Press (Casa Presei Libere), formerly called Casa Scânteii, is one of the landmarks of Bucharest reminiscent of the communist regime. The edifice was built during the regime (between 1952 and 1957) and served as headquarters of the party’s publication (Scânteia) being, thus, by design, an institution completely subject to the communist authorities. In reaction to this juncture, subsequently to the 1989 Revolution, the name of the building was changed into the House of the Free Press. The building combines elements promoted by the Russian Soviet architecture with details typical of the religious architecture cultivated in Wallachia and Moldavia. Just like most of the megastructures erected during the communist regime, the building strikes by its dimensions. The horizontal coordinate of the edifice exceeds its vertical line, and the difference is so considerable, that the aesthetic impact can hardly be overlooked.

Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena Ceausescu fled Bucharest on December 22, 1989 as a result of the beginning of the anti-communist revolution. On the same day they were arrested and imprisoned in the military base in Targoviste for the next three days. On December 25, they were tried for genocide in the same building. They were considered guilty and sentenced to death. They were shot in the inner courtyard of the building shortly after the court hearings were completed.

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