Communist Bucharest Tour

Historical full-day tour on request from 2 to 6 people

The price is as follows:

• for 1 or 2 people is 170 euros;
• for 3 people is 65 euros/per person;
• from 4 to 6 people is 80 euros/per person;

Tour Highlights:

• 6-hour tour in the center of Bucharest
• told from a historical perspective
• guided by expert historian Dr. Manuel Stănescu
• discover life in Bucharest during the Communism time
• guided tours to the Ceaușescu’s House and the former “People’s House”
• small group tour: no more than 6 people for a more personal experience

Included:

• a private car (for 1 to 3 people) or a modern minivan with AC (for 4 people to 6 people)

The Context:

The fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Bloc countries was peaceful, but in Romania, Ceaușescu’s communist regime ended in bloodshed. After years of repressed dissatisfaction, demonstrations spread throughout the country. Riots, street violence, and murder in several Romanian cities forced the Romanian leader to flee the capital city with his wife, Elena. Later, the couple was captured in Târgoviște, tried by an improvised military tribunal on charges of genocide, and immediately executed on Christmas Day 1989.

About the Tour:

On our tour we will visit the ”Spring Palace”, the Ceaușescu family’s former house, preserved in excellent condition, to see how the couple lived. We’ll take a guided tour and gain an insight into the opulent lifestyle that Romania’s last dictator and his family enjoyed at a time when most Romanians were surviving on food and fuel rations and living in fear of Securitate, the Romanian secret police.

After that, we continue with Revolution Square, the former Palace Square where Ceaușescu had seen both his glory days at the 1968 speech and in 1989 when his communist regime ended abruptly.

Our last stop will be at the former “People’s House”, now the Palace of Parliament, the third biggest administrative building in terms of area after the US Pentagon. The building was constructed between 1984 and 1997 almost entirely of materials of Romanian origin and has eight underground levels, the deepest housing a nuclear bunker.