Gherla, Romania http://community.livejournal.com/urban_decay/2313357.html

I spent a day last year wandering around the streets of Gherla, a small town in Cluj County, Romania. All that's really there are an Armenian-Cathloic Cathedral (the city used to have a large Armenian population), a synagogue, and a communist-era prison.



This church was actually under construction, but like a lot of projects I saw in Romania, work seems to have been completely halted.



These were some statues on the exterior of the Armenian Catholic cathedral. The cathedral itself was in pretty good shape, so it is not pictured here, but the statues were nice and sad/scary.

While walking around behind the prison we noticed a warning sign on the wall that read "Caution: Danger of collapse" in Romanian, which is an odd sign to see on a prison wall.
A bit further down the alley, a section of the wall had actually collapsed, but the gap was patched over with some tarps (and barbed wire on the inside, as you can see), but there were a couple spots where you could actually look into the prison yard.
As I didn't think the guards would appreciate us even peeking in, let alone taking photos, I hastily snapped this photo through one of the holes. Later, the guards admonished us for taking photos of the front gate. Silly.
This prison was previously a Habsburg fortress, and was notorious during the communist period for holding political prisoners. Now it is a "high security" institution.