The city sustained a very rapid expansion, from less than a million inhabitants during early communist days, back in the 40’s, up to more than 2 million 50 years later.

Bucharest has always been full of life – an amazing place where old and new mixed up, with people born and raised in the city living together with newcomers from all around the country, brought over to work in the big factories and city yards which provided for the socialist development of the country, as per Nicolae Ceaușescu’s ambitions.

This unique mix of people catered for the exuberance and the charm of the city up to the ’80s. The city was expanding at an accelerated pace, with all-new neighbourhoods showing up in no time and had such facilities to offer as stadiums, concert halls, cinemas, theatres, libraries and public parks.

The daily life in the city, including going to work or to school, doing sports or attending cultural or entertainment events, was matched by its vivid nightlife. Bucharest was well renowned around the Balkans as the place to be if you want to party, with plenty of choices when it came to outdoor or indoor venues around the lakes that go right through the heart of the city, as well as fancy nightclubs where one could listen to the most famous Romanian artist of the time.

It all came to an abrupt end in the ’80s, when Nicolae Ceaușescu visited North Korea and met supreme leader Kim Ir Sen. This event triggered the “July thesis”, thus ruining the vivid and colourful life of the city, as well as destructing its appealing looks.

All restaurants, clubs and other public recreational venues changed their schedule and had to close earlier that 22.00, while the only, state-owned TV station in the country had to shorten its broadcast to only 2 hours per day, with all content having to serve Ceaușescu’s cult of personality. Subsequently, this forced virtually all restaurants and clubs in town to a progressive shutdown, as there was pretty much nothing left to offer!

They were not allowed to host or broadcast any entertainment; there was a constant shortage of food and beverages, while any foreign music was simply forbidden. Soon after, all basic food got rationalized, and so were hot water and energy supplies. The gas supply got drastically limited to one tankful per car per month, thus rendering travelling by car in your own country impossible!

Like all Romanians, people of Bucharest had to find shelter and ultimately stand up and fight against this aggressive invasion of their personal lives and constant attempts to turn them into a homogenous mass of working people who only live to work and praise the Party and its Supreme Leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu.