Story
The story of Palace of the Parliament
You are looking at the heaviest building in the world, weighing about 4,098,500 tonnes, and the largest civilian administrative building anywhere. It was ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu, the leader of Communist Romania, as the centrepiece of a new civic centre. The plan followed his 1971 visit to East Asia, where he was impressed by North Korea, and the Vrancea earthquake of 4 March 1977 gave him a pretext to demolish parts of old Bucharest.
About 7 square kilometres of the old city centre were cleared and some 40,000 people were relocated. The design contest was won by Anca Petrescu, appointed chief architect at the age of 28. Work began on 25 June 1984, with between 20,000 and 100,000 people on the site, and it took 13 years. The palace rises 84 metres and has a floor area of 365,000 square metres.
Today it houses Romania's Senate, its Chamber of Deputies and the Constitutional Court, yet about 70% of the building remains empty.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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