Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest (must see)

The Palace of the Parliament is Bucharest’s most monumental building and one of the most striking legacies of Romania’s communist period. Originally named the House of the Republic by communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and widely known as the House of the People, it was conceived as the center of Romania’s political and administrative power. Designed under the direction of chief architect Anca Petrescu, the enormous complex was intended to accommodate the country’s principal state institutions as well as spaces for Ceaușescu himself.

Creating the palace dramatically transformed this part of Bucharest. Beginning in 1980, much of Uranus Hill and the surrounding historic neighborhoods were demolished to make way for the palace and the new Civic Center. Thousands of homes disappeared, along with numerous churches and other historic buildings. Construction began in the early 1980s, with the cornerstone laid on June 25, 1984.

By the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the building was still unfinished. Some planned furnishings were never installed, while several underground levels and a proposed clock tower were left incomplete. The palace was subsequently repurposed and today houses both chambers of the Romanian Parliament, along with other institutions.

Since you have to sign up for a guided tour to visit the building, you’ll enter the premises through entrance B3, off September 13th Street. Pause in front of the façade to take in the sheer scale of the building. Covering approximately 365,000 square meters, it ranks among the world’s largest administrative buildings. Its construction required extraordinary quantities of predominantly Romanian materials, including around one million cubic meters of marble, 3,500 tons of crystal and 900,000 cubic meters of wood.

The guided tour will give you an excellent overview of the interior, with its enormous ceremonial halls, marble staircases, long galleries, elaborate woodwork and immense crystal chandeliers. Don’t miss the chance to step out onto the sweeping central terrace. Stand at its edge and look out along the grand axis of Union Boulevard to appreciate the scale of the urban transformation that accompanied the palace’s construction.

For visitors, the palace is fascinating not only for its extraordinary scale and lavish interiors, but also for the dramatic transformation of Bucharest that accompanied its construction. It remains one of the city’s most powerful reminders of the ambitions and contradictions of the Ceaușescu era.