Romania's Lost Places: Photographer Alex Iacob Among Ruins, Lawsuits and Rescue Attempts

Alex describes urban exploration as an activity in a gray area, neither entirely legal nor illegal. It all depends on how you practice it: as long as you don't steal, destroy or break anything. He started around 2009, together with friends. They went to all kinds of abandoned places, mostly to socialize. Then he bought a camera and began documenting every outing.

He admits that at first he wasn't thinking about preserving the memory of places or historic monuments. He just wanted to show others his personal experience, the joy of discovery. Since then, the pages where he publishes his photographs have gathered a large audience. The film's narration says that exploration has become more than research for him, a part of his identity. He also publishes the stories from these places on his blog.

The first stop is the Marconi cinema, near Gara de Nord station and very close to the city center. The Art Deco building opened in 1930 and hosted numerous film premieres. It fell into decline in the 1980s. It has since been bought by a private investor who wants to bring it back to life. Edmond, one of those involved in the restoration, welcomes Alex and tells him that the team used his own photographs, taken years ago, to know what to expect before entering the building.

Alex had been here eight years earlier. He notes that the building has deteriorated a lot since then and that the roof was more intact back then. The team aims to restore and reopen the cinema by 2030. For now, however, it cannot even begin the work to make the building safe. If it ever receives the permit, the plan is to recover the valuable elements from the rubble so that they can be cast again. Alex takes a few more photographs to keep a record in his archive of the stages the building goes through.

In front of the facade, another interviewee points to the elements beneath the "Cinema" sign that are about to fall. In a strong wind or a storm, they could injure passersby. He finds it unacceptable that owners who want to put the city's built heritage in order are blocked because "the papers don't come through" and zoning certificates aren't issued. Across the street, he points to another ruined building, its stucco work still visible. Opposite, there used to be other historic buildings, monuments, that were "wiped off the face of the earth" to make way for a huge parking lot and vacant lots. On these lots, apartment blocks with no connection to the area are starting to appear.

One of Alex's favorite places is the old Bragadiru brewery. He first went inside ten years ago, when the windows and frames were still in place and the damage was less extensive. He points to an area with concrete pillars that once supported massive steel beams. The beams disappeared, he says, in a single day. Scattered around the building are also casts for bas-reliefs applied to the facades of buildings, with scenes of Dacians and Roman soldiers. What can be seen now is, in his interpretation, the result of the neglect that followed the 1989 Revolution. The place has remained a ruin where filming still takes place from time to time, probably precisely because of its air of "beautiful decay." To him, the hall with its columns and ribbed vaults looks like a "cathedral of light," a gift for a photographer.

The narration explains that in the early 2000s the brewery's heirs demanded its restitution, and the legal battle has not ended. The film notes that the same investors meticulously restored a nearby palace in the 1990s, and so asks why the brewery was left to fall into ruin. A representative of the investors answers that the property has been in litigation for 18 years. According to him, the communist period left wounds that are still open: many pre-communist owners never got back what was theirs, and this created a major legal vacuum. On the one hand, the investors bought the building in good faith from the state. On the other, the heirs are demanding the property back. The narration sums up the situation this way: the heirs and the investors end up pitted against each other.

The palace of the newspaper Adevărul was one of the first locations Alex explored, back in high school, and he returned there countless times. He saw metal being stolen from the walls, objects disappearing, the decorated waiting room deteriorating, and the hallways filled with inscriptions bearing the names of newspapers published in Romania and their founders. All these elements, part of the history of the Romanian press, have disappeared, he says.

He hadn't been back since the building was torn down. Now he finds a huge construction site. The film states that in Bucharest, buildings have often been demolished under the pretext of renovation. Here, Alex learns that work on the site was halted for violating building regulations: the new building was built two floors too high, and these must now be demolished. In 2021, he notes, there was a sign on the street announcing "partial demolition and structural reinforcement of the building." That did not happen: absolutely nothing of the old building was preserved.

An interviewee specializing in the permitting procedure explains how the mechanism works. There are, he says, "certain customs" probably also used by some people inside the institutions, together with the developers and their designers, to cheat the procedure. The developer doesn't apply for a demolition permit. They go straight for the building permit and, at the zoning certificate stage, don't declare that they will demolish certain elements. What follows is a whole process of "fudging" the drawings and technical reports, which claim that the building is only being reinforced. If you look closely at the plans, though, you see that the walls are new. And you can't build new walls, pillars and floor slabs without tearing down the existing ones.

For Alex, the moment the entire building was razed left a void. That was when he understood that abandoned spaces are "black holes" in the urban landscape and that he would treat them as the city's traumas.

Six hours by train west of Bucharest, Băile Herculane, in the Cerna Valley, has long been famous for its healing springs. Legend has it that Hercules bathed here. At first glance the town looks restored, but a large part of the old center, though listed, is visibly crumbling. The film says that corruption allegations have kept the courts busy for years. Even the springs are caught up in legal disputes, many are closed, and almost all the spa hotels stand empty.

At the heart of the resort are the Neptune Baths, built in the 19th century and, according to the narration, once among the most modern baths in Europe. Little of them remains. Alex is glad they are still standing, thanks to a group of volunteers who work on donations. One volunteer explains that the work began in 2019. They secured the majolica fountain and did a lot of work on the roof so that rainwater would no longer get into the building. Alex notices a support structure that wasn't there a few years ago.

The situation remains complicated on two fronts, however. Technically, the building is in "pre-collapse": many sections are on the verge of falling down. Legally, the property is blocked, placed under seizure, which prevents access to European or government funding. Everything the volunteers do relies on donations. She also shows him the imperial bathtubs: Empress Sisi's bathtub, Emperor Franz Joseph's treatment tub and the one used by the imperial family, marked with a plaque.

The narration explains that during privatization, the historic properties and the land-use rights were sold or traded separately. DIICOT described the privatization as fraudulent, and the court imposed judicial administration, which also covers the Neptune Baths. The buildings nonetheless continued to deteriorate. A man on the owners' side describes the dilemma: under seizure, you are required to maintain buildings that don't operate commercially, so you earn nothing, and you maintain them with your own money without knowing whether anything good will come of it in the end. "Nobody invests under these conditions," he says. He adds that he has no interest in holding on to these buildings, that he has a life too and wants to move on, and that he will have to sell the land.

In Bucharest, the Marconi cinema team is still waiting for the city's permission to repair the building. In the meantime, it receives a summons from the Sector 1 Police. Edmond reacts with indignation: the application for emergency work had been filed long ago. Law 50 sets a deadline of 15 working days from the filing of the application for a zoning certificate for making a building safe until its issuance, but four months had passed. "So we want to save the building and they fine us," says Edmond, because the institutions don't respond and don't communicate with each other: the Sector 1 city hall on one side, Bucharest City Hall on the other.

Damian, from Bucharest City Hall, explains the underlying problem. The law does not establish a hierarchy between the sectors and the municipality of Bucharest, and this is, in his view, "Bucharest's administrative anomaly" and the fundamental reason why nothing in the city works coherently. Each sector mayor considers himself "lord of his own slice of pizza." His institution manages all of the municipality's public property, but issues building permits for only 7% of the city's area. "In the rest of Bucharest, it's still the Wild West," he says. The film notes that the dispute between the capital and the sectors has been going on for years and that, although there was a public vote in 2024 for a reform to clarify responsibilities, parliament continues to block it.

The next stop is Gherdeal, a village in Transylvania at the foot of the Carpathians, about 300 km from Bucharest. Alex was here eight years ago and wants to see whether anything has changed. The village was founded by the Transylvanian Saxons. After the fall of communism, many residents left for Germany, and now some of the former villagers or their children have returned. New families are discovering the village, and many old houses are gradually being restored. According to the film, 17 people live here year-round.

Alex is drawn to the fortified Evangelical church, built in the 17th century, which stood empty for many years. Inside, a restorer is working on the baptismal font and wants to return it to its original form, even though the piece has many layers of paint and "has been through various trials." The organ and the altar are original and were restored around the beginning of the 20th century. The wood, however, is powdery, it shifts, it has woodworm and has to be treated with great care. Asked why she chose this place, she says it was something unique, "like a cocoon," a place where she felt protected from the very first moment. As for the point of renovating in such a small village, she explains that a foundation looks after Gherdeal's cultural heritage with the aim of forming a new community that brings Saxons and newcomers together around cultural activities.

At the edge of the village stands the Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas, from the 18th century, a listed monument and, according to the film, the village's most precious jewel. Alex describes it as one of the oldest Orthodox churches in Transylvania and says he had long wanted to come here "while it was still standing." It was built in 1795, and the steeple is about to fall. The nave painting, done on canvas, is badly damaged and urgently needs restoration. The rectangular floor plan follows, he says, the principle of the golden ratio. It is a small, intimate church, but no one has taken care of it, and the naive paintings would deserve, in his opinion, a better fate.

On returning to Bucharest, there is good news for the Marconi team: after six months of waiting, the permit to start work has arrived. Edmond shows Alex the future auditorium, with 220 seats on the ground floor and another 120 in the balcony. The great challenge, Edmond says, is to create a space for the future while preserving as many of the "superb" elements from the past as possible. Another team member speaks of this restoration as more than the restoration of a monument: a restoration of hope that historic Bucharest can have a chance at rebirth.

The film ends with an important moment for Alex: the first public showing of his photo series about lost places. The narration says that the images trace a country caught between collapse and renewal. The opening question, whether it is too late for Romania to save its historic buildings, remains open. Marconi has finally received its permit, but the Neptune Baths remain under seizure, Bragadiru is in litigation, the Adevărul Palace is gone, and the church in Gherdeal is awaiting urgent restoration.