Elena

Romanian military prosecutors investigating the events in December 1989 that led to the fall of the Communist regime announced on Monday that they have proof that officers in the military and some civilians staged an organised campaign that triggered the violent uprising.

Members of several European royal houses, as well as royals from as far away as Bahrain and Japan, are set to gather in Bucharest at the end of the week to attend the funeral of Romania's last monarch, King Michael I, who died last week aged 96.

The king died at his modest residence in the village of Aubonne , in Switzerland, after over a year of battling cancer.

Romania's former king, Michael I, passed away on Tuesday aged 96 at his residence in Versoix, near Geneva in Switzerland, following a battle with cancer, the royal family announced.

Michael, 94, a cousin of Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the last surviving head of state from World War II, retired from public life in spring 2016.

Romania's royal household has been hit by scandal after the disinherited grandson of ex-monarch Michael I, 96 and now reportedly fading away, allegedly tried to force his way into his grandfather's Swiss home.

The luxurious private mansion of Romania's late communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, opens to the public on Saturday, for the first time in its history.

The 80-room residence, called the "Spring Palace" and located in Bucharest's fanciest neighbourhood, includes a cinema, a swimming pool and an impressive dressing room. It also has also adjoining grounds of 14,000 square metres.

As she has done for the past two decades on December 21, a 47-year-old woman walked alone through downtown Bucharest on Monday, starting in Piata Universitatii, the capital's main square, where she laid a few flowers by a large cross.

It was a moving week for Russian tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev, who reached a deal to settle his divorce with ex-wife Elena on Tuesday, before walking his daughter down the aisle.

The former Ceausescu residence, known as the Palatul Primaverii (Spring Palace), with an adjoining 14,000-square-metre plot of land, is to be sold because it is rarely used as an official building, the authorities said.