A 45-minute walk west of the Palace of Parliament (or take bus 385 from outside the Parliament ticket office on B-dul Naţiunile Unite) leads to Ghencea Civil Cemetery, where you can morbidly seek out the final resting spots of Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, who were both executed on Christmas Day in 1989. The two were originally buried in separate graves, but were reburied under a common marker in 2010 after the bodies were exhumed to perform identity tests.
The tests were conducted at the request of surviving family members as a way of quelling rumours that the 25 December 1989 executions had been faked and that the infamous couple had in fact survived the revolution. The Ceauşescus remain largely shunned in death, though a fair number of nostalgic Romanians do drop by to leave flowers or light candles. The dates that bring the most people are 25 December, the day the couple was executed, and Nicolae's birthday, 23 January. The body of their son, Nicu, who died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1996, lies nearby.
