Palace of the Parliament

The Palace of the Parliament (Romanian: Palatul Parlamentului), initially designed during Communist times as the People's House (Casa Poporului) or (less frequently used) the House of the Republic (Casa Republicii), is the seat of the Parliament of Romania, located atop Dealul Spirii in Bucharest, the national capital. The Palace reaches a height of 84 m (276 ft), is 92 m (302 ft) deep underground, has a floor area of 365,000 m2 (3,930,000 sq ft) and a volume of 2,550,000 m3 (90,000,000 cu ft). The Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest building in the world, weighing about 4,098,500 tonnes (9.04 billion pounds), and is the largest civilian administrative building in the world, the largest military administrative building being the yet larger US Pentagon (cf. List of largest buildings). The Independent described it as the third best building in the world, "hideous but also sort of impressive."

The building was designed and supervised by chief architect Anca Petrescu, with a team of approximately 700 architects, and constructed over a period of 13 years (1984–1997) in modernist Neoclassical architectural forms and styles, with socialist realism in mind. The Palace was ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989), the president of Communist Romania.

Known for its ornate interior composed of 23 sections, the palace houses the two chambers of the Parliament of Romania: the Senate (Senat) and the Chamber of Deputies (Camera Deputaților), the Constitutional Court, along with three museums and an international conference centre. The museums in the Palace are the National Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of the Palace. Though originally named the House of the Republic when under construction, the palace became widely known as the "People's House" after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989.

Text adapted from “Palace of the Parliament” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Palace of the Parliament ranks #46 of 3,691 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #2 of the 74 mapped in Romania. Founded 1985 — one of 87 atlas entries founded in the 20th century. See how Romania compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗