Hunger circus
Part of Nicolae Ceauşescu's program of systematization during his period as ruler of Romania was the construction of a series of buildings now universally known in Romania as "hunger circuses" or "circuses of hunger" (in Romanian, "circurile foamei" or "circuri ale foamei").
These large domed buildings were, in the communist era, officially known as "agro-alimentary complexes." They were intended as produce markets and public Bucharest; the other, also in Bucharest, forms part of the Unirea shopping mall, nestled between Lipscani and the Centru Civic. Many others sit half-finished in scattered locations around Bucharest, surrounded by rusting construction cranes and vacant lots.
With transcendent irony, one hunger circus left unfinished in 1989 was later completed, under a revised architectural plan, as the eminently capitalist Bucharest Mall.
