Americans and mostly Europeans are making Nicolae Ceausescu’s grandiose palace in central Bucharest Romania’s top attraction — it has been called the world’s second largest building after the Pentagon — for foreign tourists.
“Twenty years after his execution by firing squad, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu still attracts the tourists despite lingering memories of his despotic regime,” according to AFP.
The edifice, which also hosts the parliament, today draws more than 1,000 visitors a day in the peak summer season.
“It is part of a trend, seen elsewhere in formerly communist eastern Europe such as eastern Germany, to capitalize on symbols of the Cold War past rather than condemning them to oblivion,” says AFP.
To erect the palace, Ceausescu ordered the razing of much of the city’s historic district.
Around 40,000 people lost their homes and had to be relocated. Two hundred architects and 20,000 other people worked day and night on the project, which started in 1984.
"Whether you like it or not," said Traian Badulescu, the spokesman of the Romanian Association of tourist operators, "the palace is becoming the symbol of Bucharest."
"It was a tragedy for a lot of people. Some even killed themselves but I do not hate the palace," he told AFP.
The graves of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena are also a tourist draw in a Bucharest suburb, where they lie separated by an alley and marked with a simple cross and red star.
By David Wilkening
