The House of the Free Press — Casa Presei Libere — is Bucharest's most prominent example of Stalinist architecture, a 22-storey tower built in 1956 that was modelled directly on the Stalinist skyscrapers of Moscow. Designed by architect Horia Maicu, it is the tallest of the seven major Soviet-style towers built in the cities of the Eastern bloc in the early 1950s at Stalin's behest, each one a monument to socialist modernity in the Soviet imperial idiom: Gothic spires, ornate masonry, and an imposing verticality intended to dominate the city skyline.
Standing in front of the building is the Aripi Monument — Wings — a contemporary sculpture by Ovidiu Maitec that creates a striking visual counterpoint to the building behind it: the Stalinist tower's monumental historicism faced by an abstract, open-form sculpture in polished steel. The square in front of the building, now called Piata Presei Libere — Press Freedom Square — carries a particular irony: named for freedom of the press in a country that now has one of the most raucous and politically compromised media landscapes in the European Union, beside a building that was originally constructed to house the organs of a press that was entirely controlled by the state.