I had briefly visited Bucharest 20 years before, for an academic conference. On that occasion, there was hardly time to see very much, but with some companions I had a short tour in a taxi. While Bucharest has many attractions, including fine old churches and a beautiful neoclassical concert hall, it was the buildings associated with Romania’s communist dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, which were particularly fascinating to me then, as now. The monstrous Palace of the Republic, now the Palace of Parliament, became notorious as an enormous folly, one of the largest buildings in the world, a colossal monument to the megalomania of Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena. The destruction of a large part of Bucharest’s old city, the levelling of a hill, and the forced displacement of some 40,000 people to make way for Ceauşescu’s vanity project brought wide condemnation as an act of wanton vandalism. Apart from the palace itself, a whole new district was constructed, including a broad avenue that was deliberately designed to outdo the Champs-Elysée in Paris, in scale, although not in style.
Before visiting the Palace of Parliament, I walked to the Piața Revoluției, Revolution Square, to the former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. Now government offices, it was on the balcony of this building that in December 1989 Ceauşescu made a speech to a huge crowd denouncing the uprising that had unfolded in Timişoara over the preceding days. The shock and disbelief on the ruling couple’s faces as the crowd jeered and whistled at them, and chanted “Timişoara, Timişoara”, was one of the defining moments of the revolution. Worse for Ceauşescu, it was broadcast live on national television, so that the whole country witnessed the mass defiance. The convergence of demonstrators on to the square, and the violence of security forces which turned it into a battle ground, was followed by the flight by helicopter of the ruling couple, and their trial by a kangaroo court and execution on 25 December.
These were heady times. As a student at London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the time, I watched with rapt attention. The previous month, I had been attending a regular weekly seminar on East-central Europe at the London School of Economics. During the seminar, a lady slipped in and whispered something in the ear of the seminar’s chair. He paused, took a breath, and announced that the East German government had resigned. It seemed extraordinarily dramatic, one among a whole series of momentous changes that autumn, as the geopolitical map of Europe was redrawn in a matter of weeks, and long subject peoples reclaimed their freedom from communist oppression. And what seemed particularly remarkable after the decades of Cold War confrontation, was that it happened mostly peacefully. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the crowds that thronged central Prague during the Velvet Revolution. It was all overwhelmingly joyful. And then came the violence in Romania, as Ceauşescu’s dreaded security forces fought back. Such dramas playing out before our eyes on our television screens were quite a novelty in 1989. Excitement and awe at the courage of the revolutionaries waving their flags, with holes in the middle where the symbol of the communist regime had been, mixed with nail-biting horror at the violence, and the shocking end of the Ceauşescu couple.
Ceauşescu’s speech had been intended as a reprise of an earlier speech he had made from the same balcony in 1968, condemning the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia to quash the Prague spring. That speech asserted Romania’s independent line from Moscow, which Ceauşescu pursued for the rest of his rule, and it won him genuine support in Romania at the time. But those days were over, and by 1989, in the brave new world ushered in by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ceauşescu was out of step not only with the region, but with his own people.
A collection of memorials in front of the building includes a rather shabby marble-clad monument inscribed with the words “Glory to the Martyrs”. Some of the marble panels were cracked, and weeds grew up between them. Nearby is a tall column, with what looks like a metallic bird’s nest attached near the top. The monument sparked controversy when it was inaugurated in 2005, with many artists saying its symbolism was unclear. Next to it is a semi-circular wall bearing the names of those who fell. On the corner of the square is perhaps the most striking monument, the brick shell of a ruined building that once housed the headquarters of Ceauşescu’s feared security service, the Securitate, now with a glass and steel tower emerging out of it.
Approaching the enormous Palace of Parliament, I was most struck by how dead and soulless the surrounding area was. None of the bustle of what remains of the old city after Ceauşescu’s destruction, just a short distance away. The tree-lined Bulevardul Uniri, Boulevard of Unity, that connects the palace with the Piața Uniri, has fountains, but it lacks the shops or cafes that might have given it life. There were few pedestrians. There was nothing for anyone to do there. It was all built on a grand scale, but without people in mind. At the end of the boulevard, in front of the palace itself, there is a big open space. A few cars were parked on it, and a handful of tourists were taking pictures of the late dictator’s monstrous edifice. Almost entirely empty, a great big hole in the heart of the city. There was nothing alive about this place. Nothing that would draw people there other than to gawp at the grotesque pile. A curiosity to be looked at, but not a place to linger. I wondered whether there would be anything that could improve this, that could bring life to a place whose origins were so flawed?
At the time of the Ceauşescus’ demise, the building was not yet completed. So much had been destroyed in its making. But however grotesque, it had been built at great cost, and it could hardly be abandoned. Uses had to be found for it. So it became the seat of the two houses of parliament, a venue for international conferences, as well as a museum. The scale and extravagance of the interior is as striking as that of the exterior of the building. Vast quantities of marble were used, as well as enormous numbers of chandeliers. Different rooms were designed in different styles, with different materials and different colours. The megalomania of the ruling couple is as striking inside as out. Two sweeping marble staircases descend into an expansive entrance hall. Apparently it was intended that the Ceauşescu couple would descend from both sides to greet visiting dignitaries. At either end of one large and opulent reception room are two spaces which were apparently intended to be filled with large portraits of the couple.
I had been prepared for the scale of the place. I had expected a palace of kitsch. But touring the building, I found myself surprised by the quality of the craftsmanship. The materials used were mostly sourced in Romania, and they are of the highest quality. The details are all finely worked. I have visited many state buildings from the communist era in several east European countries that were shabby, with a veneer of quality that had quickly faded and deteriorated. This one in Bucharest was not like that. Its halls, its galleries are genuinely impressive.
But to be truly grand, a palace should have a soul. The grandeur of Versailles is inextricably linked in our minds with the glory of Louis XIV, the sun king. Blenheim Palace near Oxford reflects the great victories of the Duke of Marlborough. The Palace of Parliament, by contrast, is associated with one of the most absurd little dictators of the 20th century. It was intended to project the grandeur of a couple who were as small and petty as they were nasty and vicious. Their rule was a tragedy for Romania, and it is hard to see how their building can ever escape from such awful origins. Perhaps future architects and town planners may find a way to reshape the palace and its surrounding area that allows it to escape the legacy of its appalling creators. More than 30 years after they were swept away, it hasn’t happened yet.
