The Palace of the Parliament (Romanian: Palatul Parlamentului) is the seat of the Parliament of Romania. Located on Dealul Arsenalului in the national capital city of central Bucharest (Sector 5), it is the second largest administrative building in the world after The Pentagon, military headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River facing the national capital city of Washington, D.C.. The Palace has a height of 84 metres (276 ft), an area of 365,000 square metres (3,930,000 sq ft) and a volume of 2,550,000 cubic metres (90,000,000 cu ft). In terms of weight, the Palace of the Parliament is also the heaviest building in the world, weighing in at around 4,098,500,000 kilograms (9.0356×109 lb).
A colossal building, designed and supervised by chief architect Anca Petrescu (1949-2013), with a team of approximately 700 architects, constructed over a period of 13 years (1984-1997), it was built as a monument for a totalitarian kitsch style of architecture, in Totalitarian and modernist Neoclassical architectural forms and styles, with socialist realism in mind, upon the order of a megalomaniac Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-1989, ruled 1965-1989) as the second of two longtime autocrats in power in the country since World War II, during a period in which the cult of personality of political worship and adoration was in full force for him and his family. Known for its ornate interior composed of 23 sections, it houses the two houses of the Parliament of Romania: the Senate (Senat) and the Chamber of Deputies (Camera Deputatilor), along with three museums and an international conference center. The several museums hosted inside the Palace are the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Communist Totalitarianism (established in 2015) and the Museum of the Palace. Though originally named the House of the Republic when under its long period of construction (Romanian: Casa Republicii), after the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 it became widely known as The People's House (Romanian: Casa Poporului). Due to its impressive endowments, events organized by state institutions and international bodies such as conferences, symposia, and others take place there, but even so about 70% of the building almost four decades later still remains empty.
In 1990, Australian business and media magnate Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy the building for US $1 billion dollars, but his bid was rejected. As of 2008, the Palace of the Parliament is valued at EUR3 billion eros ($3.4 billion dollars), making it also the most expensive administrative building in the world. The cost of heating and electric use and lighting alone exceeds $6 million dollars per year, as much as the total cost for powering a medium-sized city.
Video Palace of the Parliament
Location
The building of the Palace is located in the central part of Bucharest (in Sector 5), in a location that today is known as Dealul Arsenalului. It is situated at the west end of the 3,5 kilometre Unirii Boulevard, constructed simultaneously with the Palace, and is framed by Izvor Street to the west and northwest, United Nations Avenue to the north, Liberty Avenue to the east and Calea 13 Septembrie to the south.
Maps Palace of the Parliament
History
After the Vrancea earthquake of 4 March 1977, communist dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu (1918-1989, ruled 1965-1989) found a pretext to demolish Bucharest's old architecture buildings of the capital city. He wanted a civic center more in line with the country political stance, started a reconstruction plan of Bucharest based on socialist realism style. The House of the Republic (later The People's House after the 1989 Revolution) was the center of this project. Named Project Bucharest, it was an ambitious project of Ceau?escu's begun in 1978 as an intended replica of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. A systematization project existed since the 1930s (during the time of King Carol II) for the Unirii-Dealul Arsenalului area. Its construction was organized as a contest and won by Anca Petrescu (1949-2013), who was appointed chief architect of the project when she was just age 28. In total, the team that coordinated the work was made up of 10 assisting architects, which supervised a further lower 700. Construction of the Palace began on June 25, 1984, and the inauguration of the work was attended by Ceau?escu and frequently inspected personally.
The building was also erected on the site of some monasteries that were demolished and on the site of Uranus Hill that was leveled. In this area were previously located the National Archives, V?c?re?ti Monastery, Brâncovenesc Hospital, as well as about 37 old factories and workshops. Demolition in the Uranus area began in 1982. 7 km2 of the old city center was demolished, and 40,000 people were relocated from this area. The works were carried out with forced labor of soldiers and so the cost was minimized.
Between 20,000 and 100,000 people worked on the site and project, operating in three shifts, 5,000 soldiers of the Romanian Army, huge numbers of "volunteers". Thousands of workers died in connection with the construction of the House of the Republic / People's House, some sources mention a figure of 3,000 people lost.
In 1989, building costs were estimated at $1.75 billion dollars, and in 2006 at EUR3 billion euros.
After 1989
Since 1994, the building hosts the Chamber of Deputies, after the initial headquarters of the institution, the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies (now the Palace of the Patriarchate), was donated by the State to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Since 2004 the Romanian Senate has been headquartered in the Parliamentary Palace and was originally housed in the former building of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party.
Six years after the Palace's completion, between 2003 and 2004, a glass annex was built alongside the external elevators. This was done to facilitate outside access to the National Museum of Contemporary Art which opened in 2004 inside the west wing of the Palace. In the same period, a project aiming to hoist a huge flag was canceled following protests from the public. A flag was already hoisted on the building, but was removed together with the support.
The restaurant, accessible only to politicians, was refurbished. Since 1998 the building houses an office for the Regional Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) Center for Fighting Transborder Crime.
In 2008, the Palace hosted the 20th NATO summit for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 2010, politician Silviu Prigoan? proposed re-purposing the building into a shopping centre and an entertainment complex. Citing costs, Prigoan? said that the Romanian Parliament should move to a new building, since they occupied only 30% of the interior of the massive palace. While the proposal has sparked a debate in Romania, another politician Miron Mitrea dismissed the idea as a "joke".
The Palace has also been the background of several motorsports events, including the 2011 Drift Grand Prix Romania, which brought together professional drifters from all over Europe.
Technical details
The construction of the Palace began in 1984 and initially should have been completed in only two years. The term was then extended until 1990, but even now it is not finalized. Only 400 rooms and two meeting rooms are finished and used, out of 1,100 rooms.
The building has eight underground levels, the last one being an antiatomic bunker, linked to the main state institutions by 20 km of catacombs. Nicolae Ceau?escu feared nuclear war. The bunker is a room with 1.5 m thick concrete walls and can not be penetrated by radiation. The shelter is composed of the main hall - headquarters that would have had telephone connections with all military units in Romania - and several residential apartments for state leadership, in the event of war.
The building has a developed area of 365,000 m2, making it the world's third-largest administrative building, after The Pentagon and Long'ao Building, and in terms of volume, with its 2.55 million m3, it is the third most massive, after the Americans' National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Vehicle Assembly Building of the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan, Mexico. For comparison, it can be mentioned that the building exceeds by 2% the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza along the Nile River in Egypt, and therefore some sources label it as a "pharaonic" construction.
The building of the Palace of the Parliament sinks by 6 mm each year because of its weight. Romanian specialists who analyzed the data argue that massive weight and structure of the Palace lead to the settlement of layers below the construction.
Materials
The building was constructed almost entirely of materials of Romanian origin. The only exceptions are the doors of Nicolae B?lcescu Hall. These were received by Ceau?escu as a gift from his friend Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph Mobutu), the longtime President and similar dictator of Zaire in Central Africa (formerly the colony Belgian Congo, then the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Among them: 3,500 tonnes of crystal - 480 chandeliers, 1,409 ceiling lights and mirrors were manufactured; 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze for monumental doors and windows, chandeliers and capitals;1,000,000 m3 of marble 900,000 m3 of wood (over 95% domestic) for parquet and wainscotting, including walnut, oak, sweet cherry, elm, sycamore maple; 200,000 m2 of woolen carpets of various dimensions (machines had to be moved inside the building to weave some of the larger carpets); velvet and brocade curtains adorned with embroideries and passementeries in silver and gold.
Gallery
References
External links
- Cristina Hanganu-Bresch, The People's House: The Building and Rebuilding of Romanian National Consciousness
- Palace of Parliament - Chamber of Deputies, Bucharest at Google Cultural Institute
Source of article : Wikipedia
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