Text by Tinet Elmgren;
all crappy pictures by Tinet Elmgren and all good pictures (of
Casa Poporului) by
Mihai Tomescu. -
Click the pictures to see them big. |
The
most famous of these buildings is, of course, the
"House of the People", Casa Poporului. It
is a grotesque colossus - the largest in the world, after the Pentagon
was damaged on Sept. 11th - spreading out both above and below earth.
Just
like its slightly less impressive
equivalent Mäntyniemi in Finland, it has a vast system of bunkers underneath it.
You can see the air vents in the area around it. This giant is not without its particular charm - at least for us who
appreciate the authoritarian architecture styles ...
In the spot where it stands today, there used to be a hill with an old
monastery. At first, the monastery was demolished to make way for a
football stadium, and later on, both the football stadium and the hill
were eradicated to make way for Casa Poporului. Since the slightly mad
Ceausescu was afraid that people might shoot at him, there are no
apartment blocks nearby, but the building is surrounded by protective
barriers in the form of various ministries.
Down from the front of the building goes Bulevardul
Unirii. The buildings on each side of this pompous
boulevard were specially built in the same
Ceausescu-classicist style. I walked down a long part of
that street one hot summer day, and after the central
parts with Piata Unirii and all the shopping malls, parks
and plazas, Bulevardul Unirii started to get more and more
deserted - and just before I had enough and turned to one
of the more interesting side streets, it was but a dusty,
hot and arid strip of wasteland. It was quite fascinating
...
Casa Poporului was never quite finished. The parks around it have been
mostly left to decay and grow wild or dry out, depending on the weather. Along
one particular path all lights are broken, so it has, according to my
sources, become a favourite spot for local exhibitionists. |
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The
House of the Free Press (Casa Presei Libere) was formerly
known as Casa Scanteii - House of The Spark (the
newspaper with the Bolshevik-inspired name). It was built in order
to keep all printing presses and newsrooms conveniently in
one place, easy to control. Today, it has pretty much the
same function, except that it also houses the Bucharest
Stock Exchange in the southern wing.
The building was completed in 1956, one year after the
strikingly similar Palace of Science and Culture in
Warsaw, Poland.
In front of the building there used to be a statue of
Lenin, which was dumped on the Mogosoaia estate outside
Bucharest in 1989. hartionline.ro
has a picture of how Casa Scanteii used to look with Lenin
in front of it. |
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In
the space that this colossus takes up, there used
to be a big, old park. The building, projected as House of
the Radio, was never finished, as after 1989, there were
no funds for it. The government, under 'brave'
slogans like "We are not selling our country!",
did not want to sell it to any foreign company that would
finish it and use it as an office building or something.
The building stood there, slowly but steadily falling
apart during 15 years, and finally it was, after all, sold
to Colliers, who are now indeed turning it into an office building. |
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Romania
Travel has an amazing aerial view of Casa Poporului.
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