Centrul Civic

Centrul Civic (Romanian: [ˈt͡ʃentrul ˈt͡ʃivik], the Civic Center) is a district in central Bucharest, Romania, which was completely rebuilt in the 1980s as part of the scheme of systematization under the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Bucharest suffered significant damage due to Allied bombing during World War II and the devastating earthquake of March 4, 1977. However, neither of these events changed the face of the city more than the Ceausescan "redevelopment schemes" of the 1980s, under which an overall area of eight square kilometers of the historic center of Bucharest were leveled, including monasteries, churches, synagogues, a hospital, and a noted Art Deco sports stadium. This also involved evicting 40,000 people after a single day's notice and relocating them to new homes, in order to make way for the grandiose Centrul Civic and the House of the Republic, now officially renamed as the Palace of Parliament.

Centrul Civic is a complex of modern concrete buildings with marble façades, centered on a boulevard originally meant to be "the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism". Being renamed after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 the Union ("Unirii") Boulevard, it has been modeled after Paris's Champs-Élysées, though a little wider; it runs roughly east-west, making a grand approach to the Palace of Parliament at its western terminus. A large balcony in the Palace surveys the entire length of the boulevard.