Standing tall in Bucharest is Romania’s Parliament, originally built to provide a home for the communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu.
The grand building can be found at the end of the Uniri’s Boulevard, towering at the top of Spirea’s Hill in Romania – the placement reflects a statue on a pedestal.
The Palace of the Parliament is one of the most ambitious architectural projects of the 20th century, despite the controversial origins.
Weighing an incredible 4.10 million tons, the building was erected in exchange for the destruction of around 5 percent of Bucharest.
Ceausescu ordered for the palace to be built as part of an intensive plan named Project Bucharest. The mission was to restore the country’s capital city, transforming it into a replica of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
The building is estimated to have cost a whopping $1.7 billion (£1.3bn) in 1989, the same year the communist leader was assassinated. However, the value of the palace has since increased, costing $4bn (£3.1bn) in 2020. This makes it the most expensive administration in the world.
Constructed between 1984 and 1997, close to 100,000 people worked around the clock to build the grand project, with thousands presumed to have lost their lives in the process.
The palace is a staggering 365,000 square metres, stretching 84 metres high. Hosting two chambers of the Parliament of Romania, three whole museums and a giant international conference centre. However, these features only take up 30 percent of the building’s overall capacity.
The other 70 percent is largely empty, consisting of various vast rooms and gigantic spaces designed to hang large paintings and home extravagant chandeliers.
Not only does it reach 84 metres above ground level of 12 different levels, the impressive structure measures 92 metres below the ground too. Eight floors can be found hosting a nuclear bunker and passageways wide enough to drive cars through.
The secret underground levels can be accredited to the communist leader’s obsession with safety and security, fearing a nuclear war.
