Twenty-three years after communism collapsed, the
Palace of the Parliament has emerged as an unlikely pillar of
Romania's nascent democracy.
And while it remains one of the most controversial
projects of Ceausescu's 25-year rule it's also now a tourist
attraction, visited by tens of thousands of Romanians and foreigners
every year.
The palace, so big it can be seen from space opened
its doors in early 1990. Described by some as a giant Stalinist
wedding cake, it's the world's second-largest administrative building
after the Pentagon, at 350,000 square meters (3.77 million square
feet).
Parliament and the Constitutional Court are housed
inside. But over time the palace has become as much a magnet for
glamorous events and celebrity photo-ops as it is a site for
government affairs.
Brides pose in front of the yellow-stoned facade,
while weddings, balls, movies and fashion shows and shoots take place
inside. It's hosted celebrities – Michael Jackson moonwalked in
front of the building after a press conference, Colombian pop star
Shakira sang outside in the pouring rain, and Hollywood actor Ethan
Hawke attending a ball there to raise money for disadvantaged
children. Visiting politicians have included former U.S. President
George Bush, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and in October, German
chancellor Angela Merkel, who made a speech to 16 European prime
ministers.
Construction on the grandiose project began in the
early 1980s, when food rationing and power cuts were common. Some
9,000 homes were demolished, residents were given just days to vacate
their homes, churches and synagogues were razed or moved, and two
mountains of marble were hacked down for the 84-meter (275-foot) high
palace to be built.
Ceausescu designed the palace to house the
government and Parliament after the devastating earthquake of 1977
where swaths of buildings crumbled in the capital and more than1,500
people died. A semi-literate son of a peasant, Ceausescu was nothing
if not ambitious: He wanted the new building to withstand any
earthquake and last 500 years.
A million Romanians, including thousands of
soldiers, were enlisted to work around the clock on the construction.
Today's tours sample only parts of the building and last just one to
two hours, but it would take a day to visit all the rooms and almost
an hour just to walk around the perimeter.
Petrescu, the chief architect, insists that
Buckingham Palace and Versailles were her artistic inspirations, not
North Korean architecture, even though Ceausescu sent architects on a
visit to Pyongyang to study architecture there after he was inspired
during a 1971 visit. She says it's neo-classic in in style, while
others diplomatically call the style `'eclectic."
"This building ended up such big due to a
technical reason," she insisted. "There were supposed to be
three big institutions in here: the presidency, the executive and the
legislative corps.
She said that if Ceausescu – who was tried and
executed Dec. 25, 1989 – were alive to see what had become of it,
he "would make the sign of the cross" – a Romanian
expression that means he'd be horrified.
Valentina Lupan, one of 2,000 architects who worked
on the project says Ceausescu "was demented. Why did he want the
biggest building? Like Hitler, like Mussolini, dictators love
architects. Trust me on this. They, the dictators, imagine themselves
as architects of the new world."
