Văcărești Prison

The prison, situated in the southern part of the city, was established in 1865 within the former Văcărești Monastery [ro], where defendants found guilty of press offenses had been held since 1861.

During the interwar period, there were common criminals and political prisoners: press offenders and national security threats, especially members of the banned Romanian Communist Party.

The latter included Gheorghe Cristescu, Ilie Moscovici, Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea, and Mihail Cruceanu, arrested during the party's founding congress in 1921.

Those tried alongside Ion Antonescu spent time there, as did Mircea Vulcănescu and a host of other figures, many of them in administrative detention or with expired sentences.

There were 560 patients in 1956, assisted by fourteen male nurses with minimal training and occasionally visited by doctors who did little more than hand out pills.