Bucharest's Palace of Parliament: the Heaviest Building on Earth, Built Over the Bones of the Old City

The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, also known as the House of the People (Casa Poporului), remains one of the most grandiose buildings in the world. It was constructed between 1983 and 1997 on the orders of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with a final price tag estimated at 4 billion euros (or dollars, according to other sources).

The building stands 84–86 metres tall, spans 18 floors (nine of them above ground), and its foundation covers an area of 270 by 245 metres. The underground portion of the palace descends 92 metres below the surface. By floor area, it's the third-largest administrative building on Earth, and by weight, it's the heaviest structure on the planet: construction consumed 5,500 tonnes of cement, 7,000 tonnes of steel, 2 million tonnes of sand, a thousand tonnes of basalt and 3,500 tonnes of crystal, along with a million cubic metres of marble, 900,000 cubic metres of wood, 200,000 cubic metres of glass, 15,000 chandeliers and 220,000 square metres of carpeting.

700 architects worked on the project, with the lead architect being Anca Petrescu, who was just 28 when she was chosen for the role — remarkably, she continued working on the building until 2006. The official pretext for construction was the 1977 earthquake, though the idea for the palace actually dates back to 1935, when King Carol I first envisioned building a parliament on Arsenal Hill — a plan halted by the outbreak of the Second World War. Since the finished building ended up 2% taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, it's sometimes jokingly referred to as "the pharaoh's construction site."

Building the palace required demolishing more than 7 square kilometres of Bucharest's historic centre, forcing more than 40,000 people from their homes. Monasteries, hospitals, the National Archive building and a stadium were all torn down to make way for it. Roughly 20,000 workers, 5,000 soldiers and numerous so-called "volunteers" took part in the construction. The exact death toll remains unknown, but estimates suggest it could run into the hundreds.

Today the palace contains around a thousand halls and rooms, including 440 offices, more than 30 reception halls, four restaurants, three libraries and a concert hall. The rooms' names were only assigned after 1989 and reference key moments in Romanian history and notable figures — among them the 625-square-metre Human Rights Hall with its two-tonne chandelier, the Unification Hall with a retractable glass ceiling reputedly strong enough to land a helicopter on, and the Constantin Rosetti Hall with a five-tonne chandelier. The palace's underground car park has space for 20,000 vehicles.

Maintaining the building costs several million euros a year on heating and air conditioning alone. Since 1994 it has housed the Chamber of Deputies, and since 2004 the Romanian Senate; that same year, the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of the Totalitarian Regime also moved into the building. Today it's open to tourists and offers guided tours in several languages.

Beneath the palace lies an extensive network of underground tunnels and bunkers, including a so-called nuclear bunker built to shelter the country's political leadership in the event of an atomic strike. Most of these spaces remain closed to visitors and are still shrouded in mystery.

The standard tour lasts around 60 minutes and takes in the grand staircase, the main conference halls and a balcony overlooking Unification Boulevard. An extended 90-minute tour also includes a descent into the underground chambers. Tickets typically cost between 8 and 11 euros (plus 6 euros for photography rights), and since 2025 they can only be purchased online; combined tourist packages including transfers to Ceaușescu's residence or the Ethnographic Museum run around 400–600 CZK.

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Source: turistika.cz