Republican Stadium Complex, Chișinău

Two main gates, three secondary gates with allegorical decoration, the administrative building and the surviving perimeter walls, built 1950–51 and 1955–56. The stadium itself was demolished from 2007; these are what is left, and they are a rare surviving example of early post-war socialist realist sports architecture in Eastern Europe.

ICOMOS and the ISC20C issued a Heritage Alert on 4–5 May 2026, after the grounds were sold for the new U.S. Embassy. The Alert asks for something more durable than an assurance: legal recognition of each structure in its own right, rather than the general protection of the historic area it sits in, and no demolition, dismantling or relocation until that is settled. The case rests on B.A.C.U. documentation.

The State Chancellery acknowledged receipt on 7 May and passed the matter to the Ministry of Culture; the Office of the President did the same on 11 May. The Ministry replied on 17 June, undertaking to avoid irreversible interventions while the heritage documentation is examined, and offering to draw on the expertise of ICOMOS, the ISC20C and ICOMOS Moldova. Under the Madrid–New Delhi Document, ICOMOS assesses twentieth-century heritage on its architectural and historical qualities, independently of the political circumstances that produced it.

ICOMOS Heritage Alert  ·  Press release (PDF)  ·  Database entry

Hotel Național, Chișinău

A. Gorbunțov and V. Șalaghinov, 1974, on Bd. Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt. B.A.C.U. prepared the listing file in 2016 and resubmitted it in 2019. The building is still not in the Register, and the correspondence shows exactly what that costs.

In January 2019 the city council granted the owner a land-use contract for a multifunctional complex to be built, in the wording of the contract, at the expense of demolishing the existing building. The architectural and urban planning council accepted the demolition in March 2021, and a demolition permit was issued that June.

B.A.C.U., ICOMOS Moldova and the ISC20C petitioned the municipality in October 2021. The reply of 23 December 2021 is the clearest statement of the problem anywhere in these files: the local authority wrote that it was not entitled to refuse a demolition permit, because the building carried no registered special status and no encumbrance, and that the matter therefore rested with the owner.

The Ministry of Culture replied on 1 July 2022. Citing the listing file submitted by B.A.C.U. and the ISC20C’s submission, which it accepted as certifying the outstanding cultural and architectural value of the building, it stated that it was preparing the documentation to initiate inscription in the Register of state-protected monuments under article 18(3) of Law 1530/1993, and undertook to give notice of the date. The demolition did not go ahead. Four years on, the procedure has still not been initiated.

ISC20C Heritage Alert  ·  Database entry

Palace of the “Steaua Română” company, Câmpina

Update, 4 September 2026. The Prahova County Directorate for Culture has opened the listing procedure. The building is now subject to the legal regime of a historic monument for the duration of the procedure, up to twelve months, and any intervention requires the Directorate’s approval. This is what the alert asked for. The clock is running.

Six building campaigns in one structure, and with them the whole history of the Romanian oil industry: the manor of Dimitrie Hernia of around 1880–85, who sank the country’s first oil rigs on this ground; a summer garrison of the 4th Roșiori Regiment, then a spa hotel and casino; from 1899 the technical bureau, briefly the head office, of the largest oil company in Romania; extended eastward in 1904–06 under Deutsche Bank; a storey added in 1922–23; and rebuilt into its present form in 1941–42 after the 1940 earthquake, to a design by the architect Florica E. Dimitriu Apostoleanu, whose signature is incised into the travertine of the facade. The Petroleum Research Institute worked here from 1948 to 1989.

What is at stake is a colossal portico of paired cylindrical columns, unfluted and without capitals, faced in travertine under a wide projecting cornice slab — the official Romanian vocabulary of 1935–45, and most likely the only monumental architecture of this kind in Prahova county.

A planning certificate for demolition was issued in May 2026. The building is not on the Historic Monuments List, so until this week it could have been demolished lawfully. It is derelict, the roof is perforated and a fire in 2026 took about a quarter of the south wing’s roof — but the decay is the result of not maintaining it, and can be halted by ordinary works costing a fraction of what demolition would destroy. B.A.C.U. issued the alert at the request of the civic initiative group for the building.

Heritage alert 3 / 2026