Casa Presei Libere

Casa Presei Libere dominates northern Bucharest from the end of Șoseaua Kiseleff, in the Crângași–Băneasa area, standing on its own square, raised on the site of the former Băneasa Hippodrome. Built in the 1950s to the designs of a team led by architect Horia Maicu, alongside Nicolae Bădescu, Marcel Locar and Mircea Alifant, it is the purest example of Stalinist architecture in Romania — massive socialist realism, with a central tower and symmetrical wings, standing over 90 metres tall, inspired directly by Moscow's Lomonosov University, the Palace of Culture in Warsaw and the "sister" skyscrapers across the Soviet bloc.

It was originally called Casa Scânteii, after the official communist party newspaper, and for almost half a century it was the tallest building in the city. The great publications of the regime were printed here, from "Scânteia" to "Flacăra" and "România Liberă". Its present name — the House of the Free Press — dates from after 1989 and is full of historical irony: the building raised as a temple of propaganda became the symbol of a free press. In front of it, for many years, stood a giant statue of Lenin, dismantled in 1990, an act that became an emblematic image of the regime's fall.

Good to know

• It cannot be visited as a museum — it is a working office building; it is worth seeing from outside, from the square in front.
• The best view is from Șoseaua Kiseleff or the northern end of Herăstrău Park.
• Check the nearest metro station on the map; the area is well served by transport.

For anyone wanting to understand twentieth-century Bucharest, Casa Presei is required reading: a lesson in political history cast in concrete, granite and imperial ambition.