The Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Resistance

The Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Resistance, one of the landmarks of our county, was opened in memory of the injustices of a dictatorial regime, but also of the souls who fell prey to it and which we must not forget. The idea of ​​establishing this Memorial, which is a "means of reviving the collective memory", began to materialize in 1993, through the initiatives of the Civic Academy Foundation, the proposal of the framework project to the Council of Europe being made by Ana Blandiana. After years of hard work, the Memorial was inaugurated on June 20th, 1997, each cell became a museum hall, that describes chronologically or thematically the steep price paid by Eastern European nations under the terror of the communist regime. In one of the courtyards of the former prison you can visit a Space of Recollection and Prayer designed by the architect Radu Mihăilescu, a place where ancient aesthetics intertwine with modern aesthetics, in a silent cry of suffering endured by the nearly 8,000 prisoners who ended up in prisons, camps and deportation facilities in Romania and whose names were engraved on the walls of the descent ramp. The Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Resistance houses several works of art that ennoble the space and amplify the deeply emotional experience felt by the visitors to this place. The most extensive work that can be seen here is the statuary group "The Procession of the Sacrificed" (Cortegiul Sacrificaților), which bears the signature of the sculptor Aurel I. Vlad and evokes the impact of the communist regime on people's lives. The museum also includes the Cemetery of the Poor, located about two kilometers outside the city, where it is said that 54 prisoners were buried after dying in the political prison.