English: From this balcony on what was then the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nicolae Ceausescu gave his final speech, on December 21, 1989, denouncing the rebellion that had broken out in Timisoara in the west of the country. The crowd booed him down, and he was forced to flee in a helicopter from the rooftop. Security forces then fired into the crowd, killing dozens. The plaque at bottom left commemorates the youthful martyrs who "drove out the dictator." Altogether, some 1,500 people died in the Romanian revolution of 1989.