Lăpuşna Castle

Lăpuşna is a village belonging to Ibăneşti commune, Mureş County, Transylvania, Romania. It is located in Gurghiu Mountains, 45 km far for Reghin, in an area of outstanding beauty.

The story of the Lăpuşna Hunting Castle (or the Royal Hunting House) starts in 1923, when King Ferdinand I of Romania (1914-1927) had visited for the first time the area of Gurghiu Mountains. Charmed by the picturesque beauty of the landscapes, he decided to build in Lăpuşna a hunting lodge. The castle was built between 1925-1926.

The ensemble is composed of of 7 buildings with 35 rooms and a park of 4 hectares. It seems that the firs planted around the buildings form the contour of Romania. Not far is the wooden Lăpuşna Monastery (1779), brought here from Comori village by King Carol II, church that served as a place of worship for the Royal House. Once the relocation of the church, were brought here icons which proves the strong links between Moldavia and Transylvania during the 18th century.

The Hunting Castle was owned by the Royal House of Romania. King Ferdinand I, King Carol II (1930-1940) and King Michael I (1927-1930 and 1940-1947) often came here to hunt. It was nationalized in 1947, and was administrated by the commune of Ibăneşti.

Then, the castle became the favorite hunting place of the Ceauşescu family, the dictator bringing here numerous heads of state as Nikita Khrushchev, Todor Jivkov or Josip Broz Tito. Ceauşescu used the castle at least three times a year.

After the fall of Communism in 1990, the castle was used as a hunting base by Ion Ţiriac, Prince Dimitrie Sturdza, and many American and European hunters. Here were established several world records for trophies of Carpathian brown bear, black goat and deer. In total, there were obtained more than 300 gold medals for hunting trophies. Here is also a good place for trout fishing in Gurghiu River.

Images from here.

22 December

On 22 December, Romania celebrates the fall of of the Communist regime and Nicolae Ceauşescu's dictatorship. For his 24 years as communist party leader - 21 of them as Romania's president - Nicolae Ceauşescu kept up a reign of fear, suppressing all opposition with the help of the brutal secret police, the Securitate, with the largest network of spies and informers in Eastern Europe. At home he encouraged an extreme kind of personality cult among the population. He skilfully exploited his policy of independence from Moscow within the communist bloc to bolster his position at home and abroad.


Ceauşescu was a master at playing off the world powers against each other during the Cold War. But when Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms took hold, and one by one the countries of the Warsaw Pact claimed their freedom, his world fell apart. His downfall came as a result of his violent overreaction to public unrest over local issues such as food shortages, in December 1989.


Twenty years ago, the idyll of the peaceful revolutions against communism across eastern Europe was rudely broken, as Romania suddenly descended into anarchy and bloodshed. On 22 December 1989, Romania's communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu was overthrown in a violent revolution and fled from the capital, Bucharest. Three days later, he and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad. It was the last of the popular uprisings against communist rule in eastern Europe that year.


After the euphoria of Solidarity's victory in free elections in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Prague, this was different. The Romanian revolution was the last, and the bloodiest, in the whole region. It came to a head on Christmas Day, when the dictator and his wife were executed. Two days later, video pictures of their summary trial and execution were shown on television in Romania and around the world. Twenty years on, conspiracy theories still abound, suggesting that many of the key events were stage-managed by enemies of democracy or by foreign secret services - that the Romanian Revolution was not a revolution at all, but rather a coup d'etat.