Parliament Palace - Bucharest, Muntenia

Parliament Palace - Bucharest - details and images

Parliament Palace in Bucharest, Romania (also known as House of the People before the revolution), measuring 270 m by 240 m, 86 m high and 92 m below ground. It has 12 levels and 8 ground surface. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Parliament Palace is the largest civilian administrative building in the world use the most expensive office building in the world and the heaviest building in the world, falling three times in the record books. Palace of the Parliament building is located in the central part of Bucharest (in May), the place that today is called Arsenal Hill, framed by Spring Street to the west and northwest, United Nations Avenue north of Liberty Avenue and Route 13 east September in the south. It is 10 minutes away from Unirii Square and 20 minutes from North Station (bus 123).

The hill on which Parliament House is today is largely a creation of nature, having an initial height of 18 m, but the Liberty Avenue side is artificially raised.
Parliament House Construction began in 1983, the fundamental stone settlement ceremony taking place on 25 June 1984.

The building has a surface of 330.000 m², enrolling in the "Guinness Book of Records" under "Administrative Building", 2nd place in the world after the Pentagon, and in terms of volume, with 2.55 million m³ of his people, 3rd in the world after the missile assembly building at Cape Canaveral Space Florida after Quetzalcoatl pyramid in Mexico. For comparison we can mention that the building exceeds the 2% volume of the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and that some sources would characterize as a construction "Pharaoh" [3].

Beginning during the communist regime, (calling itself the "Golden Age" of Romania and violently removed by the Revolution of 1989), the so-called Project Bucharest was an ambitious project of Ceausescu began in 1978 as a replica of the city Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. A systematic project there since the early '30s (during the reign of Charles II) for the Union - Arsenal Hill.

After the earthquake of 1977 Nicolae Ceausescu ordered the "reconstruction" of Bucharest as a new town by itself. In the years 1978 to 1979 held a national competition for the reconstruction of Bucharest. The contest lasted almost four years and was won by Anca Petrescu, a young architect only 28 years old, who was appointed chief architect of this project exceptionally controversial.
The site itself began in 1980 with the demolition of more than 7 km ² of the old city center and the relocation of over 40,000 people in the area. Among the missing are counted monastery buildings Văcăreşti Brancovenesc Hospital, National Archives, etc. Republic Stadium. The works were carried out with forced labor conscripts, and the cost was minimized [4] [5].

The project of reconstruction of Bucharest, included a number of buildings such as Parliament House - House of the People, the Ministry of National Defense, Radio House, Marriott Hotel - Guest House, House of Romanian Academy, Spring Park and Boulevard Unirii-Victory of Socialism.
In 1989, building costs were estimated at U.S. $ 1,750,000,000, and in 2006 to 3 billion euros.

Building dimensions

* Length - 270 meters
* Width - 245 meters
* Height - 86 meters (over quota 0)
* 92 meters depth (below ground level)
* Built from the ground surface - 66 000 square meters

Resources used
To achieve this stately buildings were used:

* 1 million cubic meters of marble
* 5,500 tons of cement
* 7,000 tons of steel
* 20,000 tons of sand
* 1,000 tons of basalt
* 900,000 cubic meters of timber
* 3,500 tons of crystal
* 200,000 m³ glass
* 2,800 chandeliers
* 220,000 m² carpet
* 3500 meters of skin.

The building was attended by 200 architects and approximately 20,000 workers who worked in three shifts, 24 hours a day.

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