The Museum of Childhood Under Communism (Muzeul Copilăriei în Comunism) is a small two-room museum inside the House of Museums (Casa Muzeelor) in Iași, dedicated to everyday childhood in communist Romania. Through school objects, toys, books, furniture, household items, and period technology, it looks at how children experienced education, family life, play, and the routines of growing up under the regime.
One room is arranged as a communist-era classroom, with desks, textbooks, maps, teaching materials, school insignia, and other objects from everyday education. Alongside the familiar details of school life, the display also reflects the role of ceremonies, youth organizations, and state ideology in shaping children’s experiences at school.
The second room recreates the domestic world of a child growing up mainly in the 1970s and 1980s. Different parts of the home are suggested through furniture, toys, clothing, books, radios, televisions, records, decorations, and other household objects, many of them donated by people who preserved items from their own childhoods. This gives the museum a strong focus on ordinary daily life rather than only on the political structures of the period.
The permanent museum grew out of earlier temporary exhibitions organized by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Iași, including projects devoted to childhood memories and everyday life under communism. These experiments eventually developed into the present museum, which opened with the House of Museums in 2021.
The museum is administered by the National Museum of Romanian Literature Iași, and is one of five museums inside the House of Museums. It can be visited with an individual ticket, or with a combined ticket for all five.
