The Central Committee Building is an unlikely time machine. With its seven storeys and two wings of offices, it seems too huge to slip between the fabric of the centuries – and with its stark Soviet-brutalist stylings, it feels rather more Cold-War thriller than sci-fi movie.

And yet, unchanged by the three decades that have flowed behind it, it also looks like a teleportation device with the coordinates locked on to December 1989 – the month when the people of Bucharest booed and hissed on its steps. Standing in front of it on what is now called Piata Revolutiei (Revolution Square), I am 14 years old again, watching agog at the demise of Communism in Romania on a TV in suburban Birmingham.

Romania’s self-severing from the Eastern Bloc was the violent footnote to what history has come to regard as the euphoric game of dominoes that played out across Europe 30 years ago. Poland’s emergence from political suffocation was a triumph of collective will and “Solidarity”, Czechoslovakia’s pulling down of the Iron Curtain was a (largely) peaceful process that earned the tag-line “Velvet Revolution”, and the events that made Berlin a party zone need no explanation. But there were no hands across fractured walls in Romania; no mass singalongs on hated barriers. There was despair, fury – and, in the end, in footage which summarised the speed of events, presidential blood on the concrete.

It would not be entirely fair to describe it as the “forgotten revolution” of 1989 – not least because Piata Revolutiei certainly remembers. In its north-west corner, a cluster of monuments tells sorrowful tales. A spire of freedom rises in sculpture form; an adjacent curved wall lists the names of those who fell in fighting for it – sounding a sombre note that is undiminished by the clatter of teenage skateboarders jumping the steps below. A third memorial makes its point as a dead, limbless tree, carved in bronze. A fourth – a man fragmenting as he sits, his torso breaking into pieces – recalls Iuliu Maniu, a former Romanian prime minister who opposed the communist regime and died in one of its jails.

The Central Committee Building glowers across the plaza, as it did in 1989. A plaque by its door denotes a change of name and purpose – that it is now the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But it would take more than a burnished ID badge to disguise the structure’s past as the headquarters of the Romanian Communist Party – or that it was the centrepoint of the revolution in Bucharest. For while the uprising began with protests in the westerly city of Timisoara on Dec 16 1989, it truly ignited in the square on Dec 21. In scenes that are easily viewed online, Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who had ruled the country for 24 years, gave a speech from the balcony that was meant to declare “business as usual” – but only served to douse the fire with petrol.

Bucharest's Old Town today Credit: getty

The images are still remarkable – Ceausescu’s misjudgment of the mood; the 100,000-strong crowd starting to jeer and whistle; the 71-year-old’s clear bemusement at such defiance; his panicked policymaking on the hoof; the chaos broadcast live on state television. By the time the feed was cut, the riot had begun. It was suppressed, by soldiers and the Securitate (the secret police).

But when the dawn of Dec 22 brought fresh demonstrations, the game was up. Ceausescu fled by helicopter from the roof of the CCB, but was forced to land and was seized in the town of Targoviste, 50 miles (80km) north-west of Bucharest. He and his wife Elena were arraigned on charges of genocide in a Christmas Day show-trial – and executed by firing squad.

Celebrations in the wake of the revolution Credit: getty

In some senses, Romania has moved on from the Ceausescu period – it has been a member of the EU since 2007. But in other ways, ghosts of the era still haunt it. To explore Bucharest is to see a city still aesthetically tethered to the Eastern Bloc. Hard-cornered, unsmiling architectural giants flank its streets; on the broad thoroughfare of Strada Stirbei Voda, two Ceausescu shipwrecks moulder in the weak winter sunlight. They were under construction when the tyrant was toppled, and have never been finished.

Work at least continued on the most obvious legacy of the Communist epoch. It could scarcely not – for, though it was only half built in 1989, so much money had been lavished on the Palace of the Parliament that to stop might have been as wasteful as to carry on. By the time it was completed in 1997, this gargantuan monster of 1,100 rooms had cost the taxpayer €3 billion.

The monolithic Palace of the Parliament Credit: getty

Conceived as a colossal tribute to Ceausescu’s rule as well as a government hub, it has been reconstituted as the parliament of the modern nation. But it exudes a totalitarian menace that cannot be concealed. It takes me a full five minutes to drive around it; far longer to wander within it. There is no love for it from the guide who shows me its endless hallways and chambers – each weighed down by chandeliers and fittings whose decadence could have fed and educated Romania’s poor hundreds of times over. When I emerge after a tour that stretches out to two hours, I have glimpsed just five per cent of the complex.

And yet, to argue that Bucharest is wholly defined by its Communist phantoms would be wrong. Fountains dance on Bulevardul Unirii – accessories that sing to the city’s backstory as a “Paris of the East” – and Strada Smardan lives the capitalist dream. The lights are twinkling when I take a seat at Beef Room, a restaurant on Strada Doamnei. When the shadows of yesterday are so persistent, all extra sparkle is welcome.

How to do it

Getting there

Flight options include British Airways (0344 493 0787; ba.com) from Heathrow, Ryanair (0330 100 7838; ryanair.com) from Bristol, Edinburgh, Southend and Stansted, or Wizz Air (0330 977 0444; wizzair.com) from Birmingham, Gatwick, Luton or Liverpool.

Package price

Cox & Kings (020 3642 0861; coxandkings.co.uk) offers a 10-day “Timeless Romania”, which explores Bucharest in detail. From £1,575 per person – including flights.

Further information

tourism-bucharest.com; romania.travel

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