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Monday, June 9, 2014

Bucharest - The Palace of Parliament

Date: 9th April 2014

Among major attraction in Bucharest city that we were so looking forward to see was the "Parlament", rather the most expensive parliament house being built in Romania. It look so grandeur at night when the lights were all lit up from the website images. Unfortunately, we would not dare to step out at night no matter how attractive was the item. After all, we passed by only this city on Eastern Europe following our train route. The cab driver chose to stop at the car park area and we were free to snapped few photos on our own as long as we like.



The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania is a multi-purpose building containing both chambers of the Romanian Parliament. According to the World Records Academy, the Palace is the world's largest civilian building with an administrative function, most expensive administrative building and heaviest building.



The Palace was designed by architect Anca Petrescu and nearly completed by the Ceaușescu regime as the seat of political and administrative power. Nicolae Ceaușescu named it the People's House (Casa Poporului), also known in English as the Palace of the People.



Since 1996, the building has housed Romania's Chamber of Deputies, which had previously been housed in the Palace of the Patriarchy; the Romanian Legislative Council and the Romanian Competition Council. The Romanian Senate joined them there in 2005, having previously been housed in the former Communist Party Central Committee building. The Palace also contains a massive array of miscellaneous conference halls, salons, etc. used for a wide variety of other purposes. There are public tours organized in a number of languages. Should we stay for another day, we probably would be pleased to join the public tour.


In 2003-2004 a glass annex was built, alongside external elevators. This was done to facilitate access to the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) opened in 2004 inside the west wing of the Palace of Parliament, and to the Museum and Park of Totalitarianism and Socialist Realism, also opened in 2004. The cafeteria for use of the legislators has been refurbished. Also in the building is the headquarters of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI), an organization focused on regional cooperation among governments against cross-border crime.


In 2008, the Palace hosted the 20th NATO summit. In 2010, politician Silviu Prigoana proposed re-purposing the building into a shopping mall and entertainment complex. Citing costs, Prigoană said Parliament should move to a new building, as they occupied only 30 percent of the massive palace. While the proposal has sparked debate in Romania; politician Miron Mitrea dismissed the idea as a "joke".
Photo shared from "touristinromania.wordpress" of the Parlament night view

Source of information: Wikipedia

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