Cast your mind back to 1989.

The Cold War was ending, The Berlin Wall was coming down and satellite Soviet States were demanding democracy. Mass protests and revolutions in the streets caused communist regimes to fall in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and on and on. Perhaps you remember watching this, in South Africa, on those old cathode ray Telefunken, Barlow, Hammerstein and if your parents splurged, a Sony Trinitron TV set.

The country I probably remember the best was Romania! Here the tyrant Ceausescu and his wife Helena hung in doggedly. Eventually the dictator was overrun and within days Ceausescu and his wife were executed by a firing squad.

Ceausescu had brought to Romania a variant of Stalinism; more nationalist, more fascist and more populist. He and Helena visited China & North Korea in 1971 and met with Mao Zedong and Kim II Sung. They were impressed by the mass mobilization and personality cult aspects enforced in these nations.

In 1984 he is reputed to tell Romanian women to breed as it is their patriotic duty.

At the time of the democratic revolution the Romanian people are clear; ‘because Ceausescu denied us food he has to be executed,

Linda & I visit The ‘Parliament of the People’ building in the capital of Romania, Bucharest. Here we see Ceausescu’s opulence in the face of then a very poor nation.

This building is the largest building in Europe and the second in the world; only the Pentagon is larger.

With all its marble it remains the heaviest building on the planet.

Designed to be the show piece for the government, Ceausescu never lived there. It was merely used in the day time for matters of state.

Covering 365 000 square meters it cost $3 billion to build in the 1980’s – a cost the nation could ill afford.

It took 20 000 workman and 700 architects to construct, with halls for every occasion.

In the 75 minutes we were allowed in, we covered a distance of only 1km seeing only 3% of the structure.

That’s it , upper left

Another view from ground level

Bikers have to park at the rear. Obliging as always

It is a grand affair with marble throughout, even on all the stairs

which go on for many levels






the curtains needed cranes to hang

on many occasions

A room for every occasion- this one for receiving heads of state

on the right a complete TV and radio broadcast studio

foreign press briefing room

government ministers would meet here

the theater

concert hall

The ballroom has a carpet that weighs 2 tons (a Kirby salesmans dream) – its easier to keep it rolled up .

equally lavish chandeliers -this one weighs 2 tons

while these diminutive wannabes are only a ton a piece- there are so many one becomes blase

huge doors are a gift from a fellow dictator Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko

there are no schematics for navigating ones way around except these marble floor inlays which represent the layout of the building

the city view from one of the many many balconies

with broad boulevards where Ceausescu planned to have military parades. He was executed before this . Oddly with all this space, today ,government ministers have their offices across the road( in the 2 large buildings to the left and right in this picture)

The Parliament of the People was however just the centre of a larger project; a re-design of the heart of Bucharest. It was to become a replica of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Large administrative buildings now flank the People’s Parliament, together with broad avenues which would have accommodated military marches and the dictator’s speeches. This resulted in 25 % of Bucharest first being cleared. Many shops, schools, residential buildings, churches and synagogues were demolished and 40,000 people were relocated.

All of this while Ceausescu and Helena lived in thier own private palace

Ceausescu “own” home

complete with indoor pool ( in SA we call these fire pools)

But perhaps even more worthy of mention is that, between 1982 and 1988 almost a dozen churches, as well as other buildings, were moved hundreds of metres in order to save them from destruction. Whole buildings were placed on the equivalent of railway tracks and rolled to safety. The tracks were used again and again to save 12 churches. 22 Churches were not saved as Ceasescu become increasingly impatient to complete his project.

We visited the 16th-century Mihai Voda Church that was moved in tandem with its standalone tower. The largest church that was moved, technically a monastery, weighed 9,000 tons and it was shifted 24 metres from its original location. Many of the moved churches, though, ended up being relocated in the shadows of large, soviet-style apartment blocks as you will see from the photos. We went inside the Mihai Voda Church and witnessed the beauty of worship continuing despite another ruthless horror of a dictator.

the Mihai Voda church was moved on rails

and today is hidden behind old Soviet apartment blocks

the church inside today, fully intact