Palace of Parliament in Bucharest. Ceausescu Palace in Bucharest: the largest building in Europe and the second largest in the world Palace of Parliament Romania

Palace of Parliament in Bucharest (Romania) - exhibitions, opening hours, address, phone numbers, official website.

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The calling card of Bucharest, its main asset and pride, the largest and heaviest civil building in the world, as well as a controversial symbol of dictatorship and oppression - all this is the Palace of Parliament, the famous architectural monument of Romania. For its impressive size, it even got into the Guinness Book of Records, twice. The Palace of Parliament was built during the period Socialist Republic Romania, between 1984 and 1989, however, during its short history it managed to change several names. The first name of the attraction was “House of the Republic”, in the post-revolutionary era - “House of Peoples”, but among the people the name “House of Ceausescu” stuck, incriminating the former leader of the country. As a result, when the troubled times for the country ended, the administrative building was assigned official name Palace of Parliament.

Description of the Palace of Parliament

The palace is an eleven-story building consisting of 1,100 rooms, of which 440 are given over to offices, about 30 are ceremonial halls and salons, and among the premises there are four restaurants, three libraries, concert hall, two underground parking lots are equipped.

In the mid-1990s, the legislative body of power - the Chamber of Deputies - was moved to the cyclopean building, and in 2005 the Senate (by the way, Ceausescu also planned to do this at one time). In 2004, in the western wing E4 of the palace was located National Museum contemporary art (MNAC), which occupied several floors at once. At the same time, the Museum of Totalitarianism and Socialist Realism joined it.

For ease of access, a glass extension was built with observation elevators that take tourists to the top. The posh restaurant for legislators was also renovated in the mid-2000s.

The construction of a luxurious marble castle against the background of general poverty of the Romanian population aroused natural hostility and condemnation of the residents of Bucharest. The volume of labor and materials used for the construction and interior decoration of the palace is impressive. More than 3,500 tons of crystal, about one million cubic meters of marble, 900 thousand cubic meters of valuable wood, and 200 thousand meters of high-quality wool carpets were spent. In addition, fantastic funds were spent on luxurious brocade and velvet curtains, trimmed with gold and silver embroidery and beads.

Nicolae Ceausescu was born on January 26, 1918 in the village of Scornicesti in the family of a poor peasant. After he graduated from four classes, his parents decided that there was no need for an extra mouth (Nicu was one of nine children) - and hired the 11-year-old boy as an apprentice shoemaker in Bucharest. Four years later he joined.

He was arrested more than once for inciting a strike and distributing leaflets, which only added to his respect in the eyes of fellow party members. In prison, Nicolae's communist beliefs only strengthened, and there he met the future Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, immediately becoming part of his circle of associates. After his release from prison, the former cellmate began to actively promote Nicolae up the party ladder.

Photo: Steve Burton/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Having taken the presidency after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceausescu was initially known as a liberal: he softened the regime and gave limited self-government to enterprises. In addition, foreign literature appeared on bookstore shelves, and Romanians were no longer imprisoned for talking to foreigners.

Of course, he was not without exemplary severity: having decided to fight to increase the birth rate, he banned abortion and contraceptives, raised taxes on childlessness and complicated the divorce procedure. However, the country reacted to this with understanding.

1968 seemed to be the height of liberalism in Romania, when Ceausescu not only did not send his troops to Czechoslovakia to disperse the Prague Spring, but also condemned the actions of the USSR. In Romania itself, this was received with delight: on the wave of his popularity, he held the Xth Party Congress, at which he got rid of his fellow party members who were disloyal to him. Now Ceausescu had a free hand: nothing could stop him on his path to unlimited power.

Gray Cardinal

In all his decisions, he was supported by his wife Elena, whom he met at a military parade in 1939. Ceausescu's wife also failed to graduate from even a rural school, but this did not in any way moderate her ambitions.

As soon as she became the first lady, she imagined herself to be a great scientist and began to take part in various scientific conferences. Romanian scientists, in order to avoid problems, were forced to adhere to one rule: in all their publications they must indicate the name of Elena Ceausescu as one of the co-authors.

In essence, she was the eminence grise of this regime. She held several high positions at once and used them very skillfully. As Minister of Culture, Elena emptied museums to furnish her residence, and her relatives occupied all sorts of sinecures.

In the footsteps of Mao

Both Ceausescu spouses were greatly influenced by the trip to China and North Korea in 1971. Nicolae was fascinated by East Asian socialism: everywhere he was greeted by cheering crowds, workers were working in factories, portraits of comrades Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung smiled at him from every wall.

Returning to his homeland, he enthusiastically began to instill a cult of personality. With his easy presentation, journalists and writers began to practice fawning, vying with each other to invent new epithets for the Carpathian leader: Genius of the Carpathians, Danube of Wisdom, Treasure of Reason and Charisma, Source of Our Light, Creator of the Epoch of Incomparable Renewal. Gradually he began to believe in it himself.

The President was portrayed as a god-like great leader, and his speeches were greeted with staged applause. “The queen herself could envy the receptions and celebrations organized in his honor,” she wrote on this occasion. Wherein local residents behind his back they compared him to Vlad the Impaler - Count Dracula.

Elena also sought to grab a piece of the government pie. Noticing how much power was concentrated in the hands of Mao Zedong's wife, she decided to follow her example. Returning home, Elena, who easily pushed her husband around, easily convinced him to appoint her first deputy prime minister. In fact, she became the second person in the state, although many Romanians were sure that in fact it was she who was behind all decisions in the country. As The Telegraph notes, it is she who is guilty of the genocide of 60 thousand people and undermining the country’s national economy.

The dictator's wife was glorified no less than her husband. In addition to the title "Mother of the Nation", Elena Ceausescu was also quite officially called the "Torch of the Party", "Woman Hero" and "Guiding Beam of Culture and Science".

Habits of a Dictator

Ceausescu was very concerned about his health and appearance. He ate a balanced diet, did not eat chocolate, never smoked, and went to rest every afternoon.

State television channels were ordered to portray the 1.65-meter-tall dictator as physically attractive and masculine. Those who violated this rule faced severe penalties. Thus, one of the producers, who did not watch the Romanian leader blink and stutter from the screen, was suspended from work for three months.

His passion was hunting. Previously, Ceausescu's assistants had to pump the bears with sedatives so that he could shoot as many of them as he wanted. Friends or employees who went hunting with him were prohibited from killing more animals than he did.

Despite the fact that the dictator was brought expensive clothes from foreign countries, which he wore to negotiations and official events, at meetings with factory workers or farmers, he, at the instruction of his wife, appeared in an old shabby coat, in order to thus show the Romanians that he was a man of the people.

The more power was concentrated in the hands of the Ceausescu family, the more suspicious Nicolae became: either he looked for “bugs” in Buckingham Palace, where he was kindly accommodated during a visit to London, or he ran to disinfect his hand with alcohol after shaking the Queen’s hand.

He constantly carried with him an entire arsenal of chemical protection. Most of all, he was afraid that he would be poisoned. The head of the president's personal security tried all the dishes intended for Ceausescu; clothes were sent to him in sealed parcels from Bucharest so that no one could soak them in poison.

Dog life

One day, the leader of the British Liberal Party gave the dictator a Labrador puppy. Ceausescu named him Corbu. Soon, a government limousine with a motorcycle motorcade began driving around the streets of the Romanian capital - the personal transport of “Comrade Corbu,” as the dog was popularly nicknamed.

Korbu lived in a separate villa, and at night he was taken to the palace to the owner, who loved it when the dog slept at his feet. Subsequently, the dog received the rank of colonel in the Romanian army. In addition, the Romanian ambassador in London had to buy dog food every week from the Sainsbury's supermarket, which was delivered by diplomatic mail to Bucharest.

On the road to the abyss

The economic model chosen by Ceausescu did not justify itself: if in the early 70s, production in Romania grew by an average of 10 percent per year, then by the end of the decade it did not exceed 3 percent. The country was sliding faster and faster into an economic crisis. However, here too the dictator wanted to show the whole world that the country was able to pay off its external debt.

It was at this time that he decided to immortalize his name in stone and at the same time confirm his status as a dictator - to build something gigantic, one of a kind. It became the Palace of Parliament. In order to clear space for such a large-scale construction, the Romanian leader razed 19 churches, 6 synagogues and 30 thousand houses from the face of the earth. From 1983 to 1989, about 40 percent of the country's GDP was spent on the construction of the palace with an area of 333 thousand square meters. By the way, despite the enormous financial and human resources spent on construction, the building was completed after the death of the couple. Currently it houses parliament. The palace is second in size only to the American building.

However, due to such enormous spending and the desire to pay off the national debt, he introduced an austerity regime in the country: no more than 15 percent of local textiles reached the stores, no more than 6.3 percent of the fuel produced in the country reached the population, and there was a shortage of medicines and food.

The country was especially diligent in saving electricity: television broadcast only two to three hours a day, and apartments were allowed to have no more than one 15-watt light bulb. At night, all of Romania, except for the dictator's palace, was plunged into darkness. The Ceausescu residence continued to shine with all its lights.

However, the goal for which all this was started was achieved: if in 1980 the external debt was 11 billion dollars, then by 1986 it had dropped to 6.4 billion dollars, and in April 1989 Ceausescu victoriously announced full payment of external debt. No other socialist country could boast of such an achievement. Then Ceausescu could not even think that there was just over six months left until the end of his presidency and his life itself.

In 1989, in the predominantly Hungarian town of Timisoara, small protests broke out over the arrest of a local priest, which gradually spilled out of the city. The atmosphere quickly became tense: strikes and demonstrations spread throughout the country. On December 20, Ceausescu flew to Iran on an official visit, but returned on the same day, since the situation was already out of control. On December 21, the dictator held a meeting in the Romanian capital and addressed the people with a speech in which he denounced the Timisoara hooligans.

However, instead of the usual applause and cheers, Ceausescu heard cries of indignation. The dictator and his wife decided to flee, but they failed to escape the country. The military sided with the rebels and handed the couple over to the National Salvation Front tribunal. Ceausescu was found guilty of the Romanian genocide and sentenced to death. According to eyewitnesses, there was no end to those wishing to carry it out. Nikolai and Elena were taken into the barracks courtyard and shot near the soldiers' restroom. A news presenter on one of the Romanian TV channels said in live: "The Antichrist was killed on Christmas Day."

During Ceausescu's reign, Romanians experienced serious shortages of food, fuel, electricity, they lacked medicine and many things. The country was dominated by nationalism and a cult of personality taken to the point of absurdity. The policies of Nicolae and his wife Elena were cruel and repressive. Despite this, according to a public opinion poll, 46 percent of the population said they would vote for Ceausescu if he were to take part in the elections now.

At the risk of being considered ignorant in the bohemian crowd, I like monumental architecture. I love the scope Ancient Rome with its majestic palaces and avenues, I am impressed by the Great Chinese Wall, I like Moscow's Stalin towers, I like the Burj Dubai skyscraper in the Emirates. The unique Parliament of Romania, better known as the “Ceausescu Palace”, undeservedly forgotten by tourists, is no exception. Meanwhile, this giant monster of engineering science is to this day the largest building in Europe and the second in the world, after the American Pentagon. And let them say that the last communist leader of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, demolished half of old Bucharest in the name of building his palace. What happened cannot be changed, whether we want it or not. Therefore, I propose to take a walk through one of the most striking masterpieces of monumental architecture in the world.

A few technical details

The size of the building is 240 x 270 meters, height 86 meters, 12 floors (plus 6 floors underground), 1100 rooms. In addition, during construction the following was used: 3,500 tons of crystal for chandeliers, 700 thousand tons of steel, 900 thousand cubic meters of wood, 200 thousand square meters of carpeting. Impressive? Romania, stricken by poverty, worked for this palace for its beloved leader, who was shot without blinking an eye in December 1989 after a quick military tribunal. Great documentary tells very vividly about the horror that happened in the country during the construction of the palace and about last days Ceausescu. Thanks for the link last_ant -

I'll say more. During the construction of the Palace and the accompanying Oniri Avenue, 22 churches, 6 synagogues and 30 thousand buildings of the 18-19 centuries, which were the pearl of Bucharest, were demolished. View a selection of photos old Bucharest , 90% of what is there is no longer there these days. It is no coincidence that this city was once called “Paris” of Eastern Europe".

Construction of this complex began in 1983 and was originally designed as the Parliament of the Socialist Republic of Romania. But soon Ceausescu made key amendments to the original project, as a result of which the future parliament turned into the personal residence of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. By December 1989, when a popular uprising began after the shooting of demonstrators in Timisorara, the building was 90% completed. But the Ceausescu couple never managed to move into him. They were overthrown and executed literally a month before the formal turnkey completion of the palace.

Currently, several ministries and departments function in the building: Parliament, the National Senate, and in addition a number of interesting museums. You can read more about this building on Wikipedia, on the Parliament website, or on the Bucharest Life city website.

Below I propose to see how the Ceausescu Palace looks on a map from Google.Earth -

Theoretically, visiting the palace is not free, yet the building is also the Romanian parliament with the security that accompanies such a place. Tourists can visit the building (or rather, some of its interior) from its northern entrance, past security, where you will pass through a metal detector. All excursions around the building are exclusively organized, with a guide. You wait until there is a group of people willing (usually you have to wait half an hour at most) and for 45 minutes you are led through the inner chambers of this double Versailles. Tickets are not cheap: admission is 10 euros, photography is another 10 euros. Frankly, I regretted spending so much money on the camera and just looked at everything with my own eyes. Impressive. Reminds me of the Kremlin, where the President of the Russian Federation receives important guests. Let me immediately correct that Medvedev did not receive me, I only saw me on TV.

By the way, along the way I discovered another “loophole”: how to get into the building without a tour and see some interior spaces absolutely free. Enter from the southern entrance, this is if you stand facing the palace and with your back to Oniri Avenue - to the left and up. The policeman will ask you where you are going. Say that it’s an exhibition of postmodernism (the policeman still won’t understand you, but it doesn’t matter, it’s just that part of the building is rented by architects and they periodically hold exhibitions there), and he’ll let you through. Go straight, then right, where the glass elevators are. This is the "exhibition". The VOHR will ask where you are going, tell them it’s to an exhibition. He will let you in, just as he let me in. You take the elevator up, and there won’t be a single living soul there - you can get out onto the roof and take pictures from there. Just make sure that the police don't notice you - there will be trouble.

As mentioned above, the Ceausescu Palace is only part of the global project to rebuild Bucharest, started by Nicolae Ceausescu. The impressive Oniri Avenue stretches from the palace to the east, however, I will talk about Bucharest as such in a separate report. For now, just appreciate the scale of what has been accomplished -

After three days spent in the Romanian capital, I decided to go for a day to neighboring Bulgaria, to the Danube town of Ruse, where I intended to see the museum of old steam locomotives. Read about what came of it

04.02.2016

Bucharest. Palace of the Romanian Parliament

This building is a famous architectural structure and a beautiful capital city. Palace of Parliament(Palatul Parlamentului) is the result of the efforts of more than 20,000 people who worked 24 hours in three shifts a day for several years, and at peak periods, in addition, 12,000 soldiers were involved in construction work. The result was a building with an area of 365,000 m², which ranks 1st in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest administrative building for civil use and the third largest in the world in terms of internal volume (2,550,000 m³); it is the heaviest administrative complex in the world.

The construction of the Palace of Parliament began during the existence of the Socialist Republic of Romania in Romania on June 25, 1984, and the construction was mostly completed by 1989, but to this day some deficiencies remain in the palace.

After the 1975 earthquake, Nicolae Ceausescu initiated a plan to build a new political and administrative center in the area of Spirius Hill, which was recognized by experts as seismically safe for the construction of monumental buildings. The dictator's tendency was, on the one hand, to concentrate all the main government bodies in one building, and on the other hand, to create a safe place for the work of the administrative apparatus and political elite, which could withstand even a nuclear strike.

Total area of buildings that have been demolished since 1980 to build People's House, as it was then called, is the equivalent of a fifth of Bucharest (4.5 km long and 2 km wide), corresponding to several districts of Paris. Many residential buildings were destroyed at the construction site, and hundreds of families were evicted.

Although the area of the original building design was 80,000 m², the People's House was built with an area almost 5 times larger. Since Ceausescu could not understand the architectural plans, a model of the entire city of Bucharest, including streets, squares, houses and monuments, was made 1000 times smaller. The model dictator gave instructions on how to carry out the work. Almost every week, after Ceausescu’s visit to the construction site, the model changed.

When the 1989 revolution began in Romania, the building was almost completed. But construction work was carried out later, but at a much slower pace. In 2004, on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the creation of the first chamber of the Romanian Senate and the beginning of the bicameral system of the Romanian Parliament, the new Plenary Hall was officially opened. Now the building houses public institutions: the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, the Legislative Council and the Constitutional Court of Romania.

The size and appearance of the building amazes any tourist. The height of the palace reaches 86 meters, and its underground part goes 92 meters deep. The dimensions of the palace are 270 by 240 m. The building consists of 12 floors and 1100 rooms. A lot of marble, crystal, bronze and precious wood were used in the construction of the building. There are various tours throughout the Palace, during which you can stroll through the massive staircases and huge marble halls.

Official website of the Palace of Parliament (in Romanian)

http://cic.cdep.ro/

Strada Izvor 2-4, Bucureşti. Coordinates: 44.427280, 26.092400, Nearest metro stations:

Piaţa Unirii, lines M1, M2 and M3, and Izvor, lines M1 and M2.

Work schedule.

Every day from 10:00 to 16:00 (last tour at 15:30)

Ticket prices.

Adults: overview of the palace - 25 lei (€ 5.60), climb to the observation terrace - 15 lei (€ 3.50), dungeon - 10 lei (€ 2.50)

Students (18-26 years old): overview of the palace - 13 lei (€ 3.00), ascent to the observation terrace - 8 lei (€ 2.00), dungeon - 5 lei (€ 1.20)

Children under 7 years old and students under 18 years old (with a student card) - free;

The cost of photo or video shooting is 30 lei (€ 7.00)

I have not seen the pyramids of Egypt or the pyramids of Mexico. They are probably huge too. But I saw something no less grandiose. The second largest (after the Pentagon) building in the world, the heaviest building in the world, the most expensive administrative building in the world. This is the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, better known by the name of its customer - the Ceausescu Palace.

The size of the palace is truly colossal. A simple peasant guy, Nicolae, got used to the role of a Balkan ruler quite well - in order to build the House of the People (it was under this name that the building was to go down in history), Ceausescu ordered the destruction of more than a quarter of old Bucharest, along with houses, churches, gardens and fountains. In their place, an artificial hill was built, on which a huge building 86 meters high was built on an area of 270 by 240 meters.

But this is not enough. The palace is surrounded by avenues whose scale corresponds to the scale of the Palace. The Boulevard of Uniria (Unification), flanked by white multi-storey buildings, leads to its foot. Before they were built, Ceausescu ordered the construction along the new boulevard life-size wooden models of all buildings so that he can make sure that his plans are embodied with O false scope.

If, having passed the first security post, you approach the Palace from the corner of the Boulevards of Freedom and National Unity, for the time being it hides its true scale.

However, upon reaching the central axis of the facade, it is impossible not to freeze in complete awesomeness. It is impossible to take in the facade with your gaze while standing on the upper platform in front of the entrance, and only a fish-eye view can create an impression of what you are in front of. In fact the amazed traveler stands.

A pleasant discovery is that the architecture of the palace really very pretty and is a kind of variation on the theme of neoclassicism, maintained in good proportions and given an aesthetically high-quality finish.

The facades are clad in white Romanian marble with fantastic generosity. Although the breath of time is already felt, the breath of luxury is heard incomparably more clearly.

Let's cross the threshold and go through a series of doors into the building.

Now the building houses the Romanian Parliament, the Congress Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The event I went to was held at the Convention Center. Chandelier in the front hall.

Main staircase.

Doors to the meeting room (one of many, many...).

But we need another hall... Let's look for it! Let's go through this door. Actually, it’s not even a door, but a whole portal!

I have a strong suspicion that this hall is inspired by the St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

And here is the meeting room.

Interior details.

It was approximately in this situation that Comrade Ceausescu intended to make speeches to his party comrades. Instead, Romanian President Traian Basescu now addresses the ladies and gentlemen...

The interior of the palace is (a) endless and (b) amazing in its decoration. I shudder to think how much all this could have cost.

If we consider that simultaneously with the construction of the Palace (1984-1989), Comrade Ceausescu was paying off Romania’s external debt, building a metro in Bucharest and, if I’m not mistaken, some stupid (and now half-abandoned) canal on the Danube, the picture turns out to be completely creepy. The country was squeezed out like a lemon. Food shortages, especially protein foods, were terrible. My guide admitted to me that under Ceausescu it was impossible to get chicken eggs (not to mention normal meat - rations provided rolled-up ribs on tendons) for 8 months. At the same time, good comrade Ceausescu banned contraception and abortion. How mothers raised their children - and how many women died during illegal abortions, I’m scared to even think about. (According to our deputy director, at the former Institute of Social System there were two people who told horror stories about socialism - one studied North Korea, the other Romania.) The people were hungry and freezing (electricity 4 hours a day, no hot water, “If you are cold, buy a second coat!” - that’s what Zarathustra Ceausescu said), and the House of the People became prettier and grew. Here you can find one made in national traditions first-class marble carving,

for cherries and nuts.

Even the ventilation grilles are decorated with ornaments.

Everywhere - marble, marble, marble... According to some sources, about million cubic meters.

The invasion of elements of 21st century aesthetics looks so incredibly anachronistic that it only enhances the feeling of the unreality of the space in which you are...

I have a strong suspicion that some of the Palace’s premises (there are over 1,100 of them, not counting service ones) are not used (you’ll just have to worry about cleaning them!!!). Nevertheless, it’s easy to get lost in the “open” part of the Palace. “People passed here... people... I will find them!!!” (With)

In order not to get completely lost, we will finish our acquaintance with the Palace in the gallery with busts of outstanding historical figures of Romania.

There is Stephen the Great, there is Mihai the Brave, there is Alexander Ion Cuza. Here will not Ceausescu. The words of my guide ring in my ears: “I killed him so many times in my thoughts...”