Palace of the Parliament
The Palace of the Parliament (Romanian: Palatul Parlamentului) is the seat of the Parliament of Romania. It is located on Dealul Arsenalului in the national capital city of central Bucharest (Sector 5). The Palace has a height of 84 metres (276 ft), a floor 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). The Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest building in the world, weighing about 4,098,500,000 kilograms (9.0356×109 lb).
The building was designed and supervised by chief architect Anca Petrescu, with a team of approximately 700 architects, and constructed over a period of 13 years (1984–97) in Totalitarian and modernist Neoclassical architectural forms and styles, with socialist realism in mind. The Palace was ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989), the dictator of Communist Romania and the second of two longtime autocrats in power in the country since World War II, during a period in which the personality cult of political worship and adoration was noticably increased 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 Deputaților), 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-born business and media magnate Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy the building for US$1 billion, but...
