Helps put Romania in context, an astounding building
Disadvantages:
Uncomfortable history, vulgar and ostentatious decor
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin….the twentieth century certainly had its share of unpleasant and tyrannous leaders. Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu must surely rank near the top of the list - if there were league tables for nastiness then he would likely be in a medal position. Tales of his evil deeds abound but the Romanian capital, Bucharest, is home to the project that embodied his bizarre and frightening ideas - the Palace of the People. In terms of surface area it is the second largest building in the world, in volume the third largest. It is not just its size, though, that makes it astonishing; millions of Leu were poured into the project while Romania received international aid and its people starved.
The building was not even completed when Ceausescu was overthrown in December 1989 and nearly two decades later it is still unfinished. It could easily have been razed to the ground after the fall of Ceausescu - the focus of the anger of the Romanian people - but it has since found other uses and, although its architecture and décor are widely mocked, Romanians are largely able to look upon this macabre edifice with at least a little pride.
WHO WAS NICOLAE CEAUSESCU?
Nicolae Ceausescu was leader of Romania from 1965 until he was forced to flee Bucharest following mass protests on the streets in December 1989. He and his equally awful wife, Elena, left the headquarters of the Central Committee building by helicopter but were caught in Targoviste, condemned by an anonymous court and executed by military firing squad on Christmas Day.
Before the end of the Second World War, there had been very few Communists in Romania but after 1945 the membership of the Communist Party soared - no doubt in part to gratitude to Moscow since the Russians had played a big part in returning the territory of Transylvania - a source of fierce Romanian pride. At the Yalta Peace Conference, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt decided between themselves that Romania would fall under the Soviet sphere of influence after the war was over.
However, Romania’s loyalty to the Soviet Union was short-lived; the country adopted a somewhat more independent foreign policy than other country’s under the Soviet’s influence. Ceausescu, Romania’s second post-war leader, furthered this move away from the Soviet Union and he began to develop a concept of Romania as a great socialist state. Ceausescu ingratiated himself with western leaders with a series of gestures such as refusing to provide troops to assist the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and ignoring the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. As a result, the United States gave over $1 billion in aid to Romania between 1975 and 1985 and - in a move designed to award Ceausescu for overruling the Olympics boycott - Queen Elizabeth II officially decorated him.
While all this was going on, ordinary Romanians were suffering. They were hungry because Ceausescu, eager to maintain a high international profile, was exporting most of the food Romania was producing. In order to try to clear Romania’s foreign debt there were planned power outages. He even decided it was not only more economical to clear the countryside of peasants - whom he saw as a drain on resources - but he actually planned to destroy hundreds of villages and have the inhabitants resettled in the cities where he envisaged them working in factories that would be the envy of the rest of the world; that is the ones he allowed to stay - in Transylvania he planned to return most people to Hungary.
The House of the People - Casa Poporulu - was to be the centrepiece of his plans to turn Bucharest into a city to rival the great cities of Europe. It was originally intended to be the House of the Republic - Casa Republicii - and would be the headquarters of all Romania’s state institutions. The plan entailed the demolition of twenty per cent of the city’s historic districts to make room for not just the building itself but the wide boulevard that would approach it and the grounds it would stand in. For Ceausescu, though, this was just the beginning of the monstrous edifice.
THE BUILDING
The Palace of the Parliament - as it is now known - has an incredible surface area of 330,000 square metres; only the Pentagon is larger. With a volume of 2,550,000 cubic metres, it is the third largest in the world behind the Pentagon and the Great Pyramid at Giza.
In fact this building is just one long list of quite astounding figures; the doors alone contain 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze; there are 1 million cubic metres of marble inside; the 480 chandeliers and 1409 ceiling lights contain three and a half thousand tonnes of crystal. Not only is it 86 metres high (comprising twelve storeys) but it has an underground depth of 92 metres. Four of the underground levels are currently used, another four are at various stages of completion.
Al the materials are from Romania - the marble comes from Transylvania, the wood - cherry, walnut, oak - from northern Romania and even the carpets were commissioned and made by Romanian master craftsmen. Some of the carpets are so vast that the looms had to be placed inside the Palace itself to be accommodated.
Among its three thousand or so rooms (those are just the ones finished and furnished) are ballrooms, theatres, vast dining suites and state offices. In the main theatre the centrepiece is not , as one would expect, the stage but rather the box from where Nicolae and Elena would watch performances. It is not the only concession to Nicolae Ceausescu’s remarkable arrogance and vanity; a grand staircase constructed entirely of marble was torn down and rebuilt no less than three times because Ceausescu, who was on the short side, thought the steps too deep and feared he would look silly in front of visiting foreign leaders when he led them up the staircase. In retrospect, a minor concern….
Visually the look is impressive if not beautiful; in terms of architecture it is unimaginative and quite cold; in fact critics have described it as architecturally illiterate - not really one particular style at all. Inside there are touches of beauty but on the whole the décor is ostentatious and bordering on tacky. Knowing the background doesn’t help, it just makes the whole sight even more distasteful.
VISITING THE PALACE OF PARLIAMENT
Although the building is not home to Romania’s Chamber of Deputies it can be visited daily between 10.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. when Parliament is in recess. When the Deputies are sitting it is only open at weekends. Viewing the palace is strictly by guided tour and these leave every twenty minutes or so lasting around 40 minutes. There are tours in English, French and Romanian and there is a notice at the ticket office listing the times of each tour.
We found our guide very knowledgable but she did speak quite fast. She did make sure the tour kept a good pace but still made sure there was enough time for photograph taking and even scheduled a five minute break halfway through for a toilet visit if anyone wanted it. The commentary is neutral in content; there is little reference to the reasons the Palace was built or to the engineer of this bizarre building. Instead it was a comprehensive list of the materials used, the skills of the craftspeople and the statistics that make this building quite unique.
The highlight - if there could be one - was walking out onto the enormous balcony that overlooks Ceausescu’s attempt at recreating the Champs Elysee - the B-dul Unirri or “the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism” as it was planned to be called. It is 3.2 kilometres long - that’s 6 metres longer than the Champs Elysees - Ceausescu was determined to outdo Paris! Our guide insisted that there was no truth to the story that says that when Michael Jackson stood on the balcony and addressed the thousands of fans below he proclaimed “Hello Budapest, I’m so glad to be here”.
Tours cost around £6.00 for adults. I would not really recommend a tour of the building for younger children as it involves a lot of walking and a lot of listening which might not appeal to them.
THE FUTURE OF THE PALACE
For five solid years 700 architects and three shifts of 20,000 builders worked on the construction of the Palace. In spit of this, the Palace was still a long way from completion when Ceausescu was overthrown. Even today big parts of both the east and west wings remain unfinished, as do major parts underground and in the uppermost floors. However, work continues and it does so according to the original designs.
After the Deputies moved in, next came the Senate in 2004. Part of the building is used as an international conference centre for the Crans Montana Forum, another part is home to the Forum for Black Sea Co-operation. A glass extension on one side is used as an exhibition space where we a saw a brilliant collection of contemporary works from some of Romania’s young, upcoming artists.
After the fall of Communism in Romania the building became known as the Palace of Parliament rather than Palace of the People; it is ironic really since it is only now that it could be said to be something for the people.
HOW TO FIND THE PALACE OF PARLIAMENT
The best way to see the building is to firstly approach it from Piata Unirii by way of B-dul Unirii. As you get nearer you slowly realise the immensity of the building. If you have time I would recommend a short detour to see Antim Monastery hidden just behind the Boulevard - it is the only religious building that was spared during the construction of the Palace; it was fortunate because nineteen Orthodox churches, 6 synagogues and 3 protestant churches were demolished to make room for the building. An additional 8 other churches were relocated - not stone by stone as you might imagine but by means of large rollers that literally dragged the churches to their new homes, damaging some lovely and historically valuable buildings in the process.
To do this you should take the Metro to Piata Unirii and take the exit marked B-dul Unirii. Alternatively, a nearer station is Izvor but this means you do not approach from in front of the Palace.
Unfortunately while the building does have some wheelchair access for the staff who work there, the tour is not suitable for wheelchair users as much it centres on the focal points of the grand central staircases. The cafeteria in the basement (as well as the sauna and swimming pool) are also just for the use of the politicians).
There is a bookshop at the entrance which sells a wide selection of publications about Romanian history, in particular Bucharest as well as higher end souvenirs including some attractive handcrafted ceramics and glass.
RECOMMENDED?
I will certainly never forget my visit to the “Palace of the People” though I did not find it either attractive or a pleasant experience. It may be a working building but there is still an uneasy feeling about being in a building with such a notorious history. However, it is important to understand the background to Romania’s current situation even if the tour fails to put the building into context. It is worth doing your own background reading into Romania’s recent history to understand the significance of the building if you intend to visit. These days Bucharest can easily look to tourists as if the problems of the past are fading into memory and visiting the Palace is a very good way of reminding yourself that - like the construction work - there is still some way to go.
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