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Palace of the Parliament
Palatul Parlamentului
The Palace in 2024
Former names	"House of the Republic"
Alternative names	"The People's House"
General information
Architectural style	Postmodern (mainly Neoclassical, described as "Neo-Neoclassical")
Address	Strada Izvor 2-4
Town or city	Bucharest
Country	Romania
Coordinates	44°25′39″N 26°5′15″E / 44.42750°N 26.08750°E / 44.42750; 26.08750
Groundbreaking	25 June 1984
Completed	1997
Cost	€4 billion euros
Height
Architectural	84 m (276 ft)
Technical details
Size	240 m (790 ft) long, 270 m (890 ft) wide
Floor count	12
Floor area	365,000 m (3,930,000 sq ft)
Grounds	66,000 m
Design and construction
Architect(s)	700 architects under the direction of chief architect Anca Petrescu (1949–2013)
Designations	World's largest civilian building with an administrative function World's most expensive administrative building World's heaviest administrative building
Other information
Number of rooms	1,100

The Palace of the Parliament (Romanian: Palatul Parlamentului), also known as the House of the Republic (Casa Republicii) or People's House/People's Palace (Casa Poporului), 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), has a floor area of 365,000 m (3,930,000 sq ft) and a volume of 2,550,000 m (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 third largest administrative building in the world.

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 and the second of two long-ruling heads of state in the country since World War II, during a period in which the personality cult of political worship and adoration increased considerably for him and his family.

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), along with three museums and an international conference center. The museums in the Palace are the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Communist Totalitarianism (established in 2015) 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. Due to its impressive characteristics, events organized by state institutions and international bodies such as conferences and symposia take place there, but despite this about 70% of the building remains empty.

As of 2020, the Palace of the Parliament is valued at €4 billion, making it the most expensive administrative building in the world. The cost of heating and electricity alone exceeds $6 million per year.

The old Palace of the Chamber of Deputies is now the Palace of the Patriarchate.

Location

The Palace is in Sector 5 in the central part of Bucharest, at the top of Dealul Spirii (Spirea's Hill), also known as Dealul Arsenalului (Arsenal Hill). It is at the west end of the 3.5-kilometre (2.2 mi) Bulevardul Unirii (Union Boulevard), constructed at the same time as the Palace, and is ringed by Izvor Street to the west and northwest, United Nations Avenue to the north, Liberty Avenue to the east and Calea 13 Septembrie to the south.

History

The construction of the Palace of the Parliament was the most extreme expression of the systematization program imposed on Romania by Nicolae Ceaușescu. Systematization was a program of urban planning carried out by Ceaușescu, who was impressed by the societal organization and mass adulation he saw in North Korea's Juche ideology during his East Asia visit in 1971. Ceaușescu decided to implement similar policies in his country, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a "multilaterally developed socialist society."

A systematization project had existed since the 1930s (during the time of King Carol II) for the Unirii–Dealul Arsenalului area. The Vrancea earthquake of 4 March 1977 gave Ceaușescu a pretext to demolish parts of old Bucharest. He wanted a civic center more in line with the country's political stance and started a reconstruction plan of Bucharest based on the socialist realism style. The House of the Republic was the centrepiece of Ceaușescu's project. Named Project Bucharest, it began in 1978 as an intended replica of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. North Korean President Kim Il Sung had started construction on a similarly monumental residence, the Kumsusan Palace, two years earlier.

A contest was held and won by Anca Petrescu (1949–2013), who was appointed chief architect of the project at the age of 28. The team that coordinated the work was made up of 10 assisting architects, which supervised a further 700. Construction of the palace began on 25 June 1984, and the inauguration of the work was attended by Ceaușescu, who also frequently inspected the site.

Uranus Hill was leveled, and the Uranus-Izvor neighborhood was destroyed so the building could be erected. The area had also been home to the National Archives, Mihai Vodă Monastery and other monasteries, Brâncovenesc Hospital, as well as about 37 old factories and workshops. Demolition in the Uranus area began in 1982. Approximately 7 km (2.7 sq mi) of the old city centre were demolished, with 40,000 people being relocated from the area.

The works were carried out with forced labour in addition to soldiers, minimizing costs.

Between 20,000 and 100,000 people worked on the site and project, operating in three shifts made up of 5,000 Romanian People's Army soldiers and huge numbers of "volunteers". The number of deaths that occurred during construction is a matter of controversy, the official data suggests 27 but workers involved in the construction of the building talk of a much higher number, some say thousands.

During the 1980s, the Romanian government implemented a crippling austerity policy to pay the foreign debt. In 1989, the building costs were estimated at US$1.75 billion, and in 2006 at US$3 billion. In 1990, Australian-born business and media magnate Rupert Murdoch tried to buy the building for US$1 billion, but his bid was rejected.

After 1989

Since 1994, the palace has housed the lower house of the Romanian Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, after its former seat, the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies (now the Palace of the Patriarchate), was donated by the state to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Since 2004, the upper house, the Senate of Romania, has also been housed in the Palace of the Parliament, after having left the former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party.

Six years after the palace's completion, between 2003 and 2004, a glass annex was built alongside the external elevators. This was done to facilitate outside access to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 2004 in the west wing of the palace. During the same period, a project aiming to hoist a huge flag was cancelled following public protests. A flag already hoisted outside the building was also removed after the protests.

A restaurant inside the palace, accessible only to politicians, was refurbished. Since 1998, the building has also housed an office for the Regional Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) Centre for Fighting Transborder Crime.

In 2008, the Palace hosted the 20th summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 2010, politician Silviu Prigoană proposed re-purposing the building into a shopping centre and entertainment complex. Citing costs, Prigoană said that the Romanian Parliament should move to a new building, since they occupied only 30% of the massive palace. While the proposal sparked debate in Romania, politician Miron Mitrea dismissed the idea as a "joke".

The palace has also been the background for several motorsports events, including the 2011 Drift Grand Prix Romania, which brought together professional drifters from all over Europe.

Copyrights over the building's image

Although the Palace of the Parliament was financed from public funds and the architects did work for hire, after the death of chief architect Anca Petrescu, her heirs sued the Chamber of Deputies for using images of the iconic building without authorization. The chamber was accused of copyright infringement for selling photos and souvenirs depicting the building's image. In other lawsuits, the heirs claimed violation of trademarks owned by the chief architect through the depiction of the palace from different angles.

While legal experts state that no restrictions exist for tourists wishing to photograph the iconic building for non-commercial purposes, Petrescu's heirs have clearly set out that any commercial use of the building's image is subject to a 2% royalty fee. It is believed the situation could have been avoided if an agreement between the chief architect and the beneficiary (the Romanian state) had addressed the intellectual property rights and Romania had implemented freedom of panorama, restricting the scope of copyright law in such cases.

Technical details

Construction of the palace began in 1984 and was initially scheduled for completion in two years. The project was extended to 1990, but in 2013 it was reported that only 400 rooms and two large meeting rooms were finished and being used, out of a total of 1,100 rooms.

The building has eight underground levels, the deepest housing a nuclear bunker, linked to main state institutions by 20 km (12.4 mi) of tunnels. Nicolae Ceaușescu feared nuclear war. The bunker is a room with 1.5 m (4.9 ft) thick concrete walls said to be impervious to radiation. The shelter is composed of a main hall – headquarters which would have had telephone connections with all military units in Romania – and several residential apartments for state leadership, to be used in the event of war.

The palace's floor area of 365,000 m (3,930,000 sq ft) makes it the world's third-largest administrative building after the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C. in the United States and the Sappaya-Sapasathan in Thailand. It is also among the most massive buildings in terms of volume, measuring 2,550,000 m (90,000,000 cu ft): for comparison, the building exceeds by 2% the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, leading some sources to label it "pharaonic".

The Palace of the Parliament sinks 6 mm (0.24 in) each year due to its weight. Romanian specialists who have analyzed the data have explained that the palace's massive weight is causing the layers of sediment below the building to settle.

Materials

The building was constructed almost entirely of materials of Romanian origin. Among the few exceptions are the doors of Nicolae Bălcescu Hall, received by Ceaușescu as a gift from his friend Mobutu Sese Seko, longtime totalitarian President of Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Among the materials are 3,500 tonnes of crystal – 480 chandeliers, 1,409 ceiling lights and mirrors were manufactured; 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze for monumental doors and windows, chandeliers and capitals; 1,000,000 m (35,000,000 cu ft) of marble, 900,000 m (32,000,000 cu ft) of wood (over 95% domestic) for parquet and wainscotting, including walnut, oak, sweet cherry, elm, sycamore maple; 200,000 m (2,200,000 sq ft) of woollen carpets of various dimensions (machines had to be moved inside the building to weave some of the larger carpets); velvet and brocade curtains adorned with embroideries and passementeries in silver and gold.

In popular culture

The Palace of the Parliament has featured in a variety of films, most famously as the Vatican in the 2018 horror film The Nun. Other films include War Dogs, starring Jonah Hill; Dying of the Light, starring Nicolas Cage; and What About Love (2022), starring Sharon Stone and Andy García.

It also appeared on an episode of Top Gear in 2009, titled "Romanian GT Road Trip to Find the Transfagarasan Highway".

Gallery

• Details
• Elaborate decorations in Alexandru Ioan Cuza Hall
• The palace's crystal chandeliers were manufactured at Vitrometan Mediaș glass factory. Manufacturing the 480 chandeliers took two years.
• Inside the Palace of the Parliament
• International Conference Centre
• "C. A. ROSETTI" Hall
• Palace of the Parliament as photographed from Union Avenue
• Parking nearby Palace of the Parliament
• Wide shot of the palace

See also

• Seven Wonders of Romania

References

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2. "Palace of Parliament". Bucharest International Conference Centre. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
3. "Heaviest building". Guinness World Records.
4. "Anca Petrescu". The Telegraph. 11 July 2018.
5. ^ "Vlad Bodogan: Architecture of oppression: an analyses of the socio-political implications behind the construction of Casa Scânteii". Pavilion Magazine. 11 July 2018.
6. Munteanu, Teodora (12 February 2018). "Megalomania lui Ceaușescu: dorința de a merge pe sub București și povestea catacombelor secrete". Ediția de Dimineață (in Romanian).
7. Covrig, Roxana (3 August 2013). "Se muncea, dar se și murea. Povești cutremurătoare de pe șantierele lui Ceaușescu".
8. "Senatul a adoptat legea privind infiintarea Muzeului Totalitarismului Comunist. Academia Romana va intocmi si un raport de condamnare a comunismului". HotNews.ro. 22 September 2015.
9. "Palatul Parlamentului, o emblema a Bucurestiului". Hotel-Bucuresti.com. 29 April 2015.
10. Malathronas, John (5 December 2014). "Palace of the damned dictator: On the trail of Ceausescu in Bucharest". CNN.
11. "Casa Poporului – de trei ori în Cartea Recordurilor". Gândul. 4 April 2008. Archived from the original on 27 July 2018.
12. Andrei Pandele (September 2008). "Palatul Parlamentului din Casa Poporului". National Geographic România. Archived from the original on 23 March 2016.
13. Roxana Ruscior (21 August 2014). ""Ceauşima" – cum a fost demolat cartierul Uranus". Descoperă.ro.
14. "Demolarea casei Grigore Cerkez după cutremurul din 1977". 11 July 2018.
15. "De la Casa Poporului la Palatul Parlamentului. Istoria clădirii care a intrat de trei ori în Cartea Recordurilor". Digi24. 31 October 2013.
16. "Spitalul Brâncovenesc nu trebuia să cadă!". Ziarul Ring. 22 February 2010.
17. "Atunci si acum: Casa Poporului". Metropotam. 9 June 2009.
18. "The Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest", Radio Netherlands Archives, 19 November 1997
19. Ioan Popa (1992). Robi pe Uranus (I ed.). Humanitas. ISBN 973-28-0304-5.
20. "Şantierele groazei. Cum s-au construit cu sânge mastodonţii doriţi de Ceauşescu: Casa Poporului, Canal, Transfăgărăşan şi Bicaz". 11 July 2018.
21. Realitatea.NET (20 August 2021). "Culisele statului paralel | Detalii NESTIUTE despre Casa Poporului. A cui a fost ideea ridicarii monumentului strategic - Cati oameni au murit pe santier". Realitatea.NET (in Romanian). Retrieved 9 June 2022.
22. "Şantierele groazei. Cum s-au construit cu sânge mastodonţii doriţi de Ceauşescu: Casa Poporului, Canal, Transfăgărăşan şi Bicaz". adevarul.ro. April 2015.
23. Murgoci, Anca. "Peste ce s-a construit Casa Poporului. Vezi imagini din 1982". DCNews (in Romanian). Retrieved 9 June 2022.
24. "Detalii nestiute despre Casa Poporului, cea mai scumpa cladire administrativa din lume". Stirile Pro TV. 16 May 2013.
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26. "South-East Europe Cooperative Initiative (SECI)". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia. Archived from the original on 2 November 2015.
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28. "Guest Blog: Drift.ro>> Sideways in Romania's Capital – Speedhunters". Speedhunters. 29 October 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
29. ^ "Bătălia pentru imaginea Palatului Parlamentului. Decizia luată de OSIM". Stirileprotv.ro. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
30. ^ "Taking photos of the Palace of Parliament can be considered illegal". Pandects dpVUE. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
31. "Detalii nestiute despre Casa Poporului, cea mai scumpa cladire administrativa din lume". Știrile ProTV (in Romanian). 13 May 2013. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
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33. "La plimbare prin subsolul Casei Poporului". Adevărul. 26 March 2010.
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36. "Casa Poporului se scufundă în sol în fiecare an. Ce spun specialiştii despre acest "fenomen"". Gândul. 26 December 2014.
37. ^ "7 Amazing Facts about The Palace of The Parliament in Bucharest". YourAmazingPlaces.com. 28 March 2015.
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39. "Filming Location Matching "Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania" (Sorted by Popularity Ascending)". IMDb. Retrieved 10 November 2021.
40. "VITROMETAN, locul unde 2 ani s-a lucrat la candelabrele din Casa Poporului. De la moda peştelui din sticlă colorată aşezat pe mileul de pe televizor la planul pentru supravieţuire". Mediafax. 26 March 2013.

External links

• Palace of Parliament – Chamber of Deputies, Bucharest at Google Cultural Institute

v t e Tall buildings in Romania
Built Bucharest >100 m Floreasca City Center (137 m) People's Salvation Cathedral (135 m) Globalworth Tower (118 m) Ana Tower (110 m) Bucharest Tower Center (106 m) House of the Free Press (104 m) 70-100 m Asmita Gardens (92 m) Orhideea Towers (85 m) Palace of the Parliament (84 m) Bucharest Financial Plaza (83 m) BRD Tower (82 m) Charles de Gaulle Plaza (80 m) Doamna Ghica Plaza A (80 m) Euro Tower (80 m) Grand Hotel Bucharest (77 m) Nusco Tower (76 m) Monaco Towers (76 m) Cathedral Plaza (75 m) City Gate Towers (75 m) TVR Tower (74 m) Crystal Tower (72 m) Millennium Business Center (72 m) The Mark (70 m) <70 m Unicredit Tower (68 m) United Nations Plaza (66 m) Phoenix Tower (65 m) Rin Grand Hotel (65 m) Piraeus Bank Tower (64 m) Premium Plaza (64 m) Griro Tower (60 m) Bucharest Corporate Center (60 m) CCIR Building (57 m) BSE Tower (56 m) UpGround (55 m) Pipera Business Tower (54 m) Pullman Hotel (52 m) Oracle Tower (45 m) Anchor Plaza (35 m) Satu Mare Administrative Palace Satu Mare (97 m) Dana Complex (64 m) Cluj Napoca West City Tower (95 m) BRD Tower (50 m) Timișoara UBC 0 (90 m) UBC 3 (84 m) ISHO Riverside A (75 m) ISHO Riverside D (70 m) UBC 2 (60 m) UBC 1 (60 m) Iași Palas Iași (71 m) University of Medicine and Pharmacy (65 m) Sibiu MyContinental Hotel (58 m) BCR Tower Sibiu (56 m)		Bucharest skyline in 2022.
Proposed Esplanada City Center (250 m) Dâmbovița Center Towers (155 m) Cefin Tower (125 m) Sky Towers Cluj Napoca (125 m) Sigma Towers (120 m) Sema Parc Hotel (75 m)
Demolished Basarab Tower (104 m) Carlton Bloc (47 m)
Tallest timeline Turnul Colței (1714–1888) Foișorul de Foc (1890–1932) Carlton Bloc (1932–1934) Telephones Company Building (1934–1956) House of the Free Press (1956–2007) Bucharest Tower Center (2007–2012) Floreasca City Center (2012–present)
Buildings listed in order of height Building data source: Skyscraper Center See also: List of tallest buildings in Romania & List of tallest buildings in Bucharest Category:Buildings and structures in Romania Category:Skyscrapers in Romania

v t e Museums in Bucharest
Aeronautic	National Museum of Romanian Aviation
Anthropology	Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum Romanian Peasant Museum
Art	Frederic and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Art Museum Museum of Art Collections Museum of Recent Art National Museum of Art of Romania National Museum of Contemporary Art Nicolae Minovici Folk Art Museum Theodor Aman Museum Theodor Pallady Museum Zambaccian Museum
History	Bucharest Observatory Cotroceni Palace Jewish Museum National History Museum of Romania Palace of the Parliament
Memorial house	Cantacuzino Palace Tudor Arghezi House
Military	National Military Museum National Museum of Firefighters
Natural	Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History National Geological Museum
Technical	Dimitrie Leonida Technical Museum
Category

• Government buildings completed in 1997
• Museums in Bucharest
• Government buildings in Romania
• Palaces in Bucharest
• Parliament of Romania
• Legislative buildings in Europe
• Seats of national legislatures
• Landmarks in Romania
• Skyscraper office buildings in Bucharest
• Terminating vistas
• Stalinist architecture
• Neoclassical architecture in Romania
• 1997 establishments in Romania