Urbex Romania. Ceausescu prison Doftana

Sneaking into the abandoned Nicolae Ceaușescu prison Doftana

On the first day of our Romania road trip we would try to enter the abandoned Doftana prison. This prison, built in 1895, once housed the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. During the reign of the Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand, political prisoners were imprisoned here. After WWII, mainly German and Russian prisoners of war were held here. Currently, this 125-year-old prison is abandoned and most of the roof has collapsed. So we had to be very careful here! After a drive of more than two hours, we arrived at the prison and parked our car nearby.

For years this ruin was guarded by a permanent guard with a dog, but when we stood at the closed gate we did not notice anything. We only had one problem: the iron gate was locked and unfortunately our bodies no longer allowed us to climb over the wall. There was a path to the left of the entrance gate. The wall slowly turned into a wire fence. Suddenly we heard dogs barking. A large and a small dog came running towards us with their upper teeth bared. A large, heavy chain suddenly put an end to the big dog’s sprint with a big “chokkk”. That did not go unnoticed by his little friend because the little coward suddenly had fewer notes on his singing. He also stopped the fight and with a far from graceful wave, Erik and I reached the other side of the fence. While we looked around, we walked through the trees and bushes to the old prison where communists were once held captive. An old door stood open to the right of the iron entrance gate. This allowed us to sneak inside. Through a window we arrived at the reception room where a plaster model was set up. Unfortunately, it had not completely survived the years.

We gained access to the first floor via a wooden, creaking staircase. Here we saw sturdy wooden cell doors that were all open. The cells were empty and very small. You could still see where the beds used to be attached to the walls. The roof had collapsed in many places and rain in recent decades had made the wooden structure weak. The ground was littered with glass and sharp objects, so we had to be careful where we put our feet. We were struck by how small the cells were. Here people had been locked up on four square meters (!). If you looked outside you saw the high prison wall. At the corners of the massive walls stood the seven high watchtowers. From here, Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was executed with 120 bullets in 1989, and the other prisoners in the other 307 cells were monitored. Unfortunately, we no longer saw any traces of the weekly leaflet that prisoners wrote on toilet paper and smuggled from cell to cell with a string. We stayed in this prison for an hour when we thought it was time to go again. We were both unaware of the possible punishment we would receive here in Romania if we were caught and the general rule when urbexing is always: keep moving and don’t linger too long. Bye !

Do you also want to visit this place? GPS: 45.136600, 25.772800

Extra information:

Execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena.