Romania-Bulgaria 2023

Bucharest, Romania – Ruse, Bulgaria

Palace of the Parliament (Palatul Parlamentului), or (post-1989) People´s House (Casa Poporului), Bucharest
Built on a hill called Dealul Spirii, after a doctor named Spiridon “Spirea” Kristofi, who built a fortified church in 1765, Spirea Veche. In 1984, the dictator president of Communist Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918-1989) demolished the church to build the House of the People. In this era, a large number of old heritage buildings were demolished in the cause of modernisation.
The hill was also the location of the 1776 Curtea Nouă (‘the New Court’), the residence for Alexander Ypsilantis, Prince of Wallachia. The final battle of the 1848 Wallachian Revolution was fought on the hill, between the Romanian rebels and troops of the Ottoman Empire. A mass grave was discovered, revealing people who died during the Black Death of the 1340s.

Ceaușescu´s Folly

With a floor space of 365,000 square metres, a height of 84m, and a volume of two and a half million cubic metres, the building is the third largest administrative building in the world. It is possibly the heaviest building in the world: in total, about 4 million tonnes, of which 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, a million cubic metres of marble, 3,500 tonnes of crystal glass, and 900,000 cubic metres of wood. [Guinness Book of Records]
The modernist Neoclassical building was commenced in 1984, and had not been completed at the time of the 1989 revolution, in which its instigator was killed. 700 architects worked on the project, over 13 years, from 1984 till 1997. It houses both houses of government, three museums, including the Museum of Communist Totalitarianism, and a conference centre. About 70% of the building remains unused.
The building has an estimated value of 4 billion euro, making it the most expensive administration building every built anywhere. Heating and electricity bills hit the Romanian taxpayers for more than 5 million euros every year.

To see more of this trip on the Travelogue, click here: Romania-Bulgaria 2023