It’s hard not to be a little intrigued by this building in central Bucharest which isn’t in the greatest of shapes. Originally conceived in the mid-1980s as the Museum of the Romanian Communist Party, the massive structure was designed to be a centrepiece of the ‘Civic Center’ redevelopment project that transformed much of old Bucharest.
The idea of course was that of Nicolae Ceausescu, who led his country to fall apart and collapse whilst he focused on grand projects such as this and the Parliament building which Romania simply couldn’t afford. He was the sort of leader who would build a big ballroom because he thought it would help his reputation. I make no comment.
By the time of the 1989 Revolution which led to the execution of Ceausescu, the exterior was largely complete, yet the interior remained a hollow shell of concrete and steel. It was mostly left as it was, but there were plans to relocate the state broadcaster here, but there wasn’t enough money. There wasn’t always a big gap between the buildings, that was more recent work for a brand new project that also fell apart.
There it sits in all its modesty by the river, never to hold the museum to the history of communism that Ceausescu wanted. There are plans to bring the building back into use, but it’s so large and in a state of such disrepair that any project will require huge sums of money.