HX Report
Irishman in the Middle East
Romania – 4/7 – The Palace of Parliament
Quiz Question Nr 1 – What is the largest administrative building in the world?
Answer – The Pentagon (easy!).
Quiz Question Nr 2 – What is the second largest administrative building in the world? Answer – See below.
The Palace of Parliament (PAP) in Bucharest, capital of Romania, is approximately 4M Sq Feet in area and took 13 years to construct utilising a team of approximately 700 architects. That’s a lot of architects!
Our old (deceased) friend, megalomaniac communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, from two HX blog posts previous, ordered the construction of the building as a tribute to the communist ideology and to his own ego. The PAP lies at the end of the 3.5km Unirii Boulevard which Ceaușescu had constructed at the same time and which he ordered to mimic the Champs Elysees in Paris, ordering it to be some 30m longer than its famous French cousin, just to show the Frenchies who was who! The PAP is also famous for the fact that it had secret underground tunnels to some of Bucharest’s more important places of communist days, presumably providing Mr & Mrs C with a quick get-away should the need arise. MB made a comment to his guide at Revolution Square last week that it was a pity for the Ceaușescus that they didn’t think of making their final speech to the public from the PAP, instead of from the balcony of the Communist Party HQ. History might have had a different outcome had they done so. MB’s guide agreed!
The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest is the second largest administrative building in the world – See Quiz Question Nr 2 above.
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The Bucharest ‘Champs Elysees’
The Palace of Parliament, 2/3s of which lies underground. This shot is taken from a considerable distance away and perhaps does not convey the enormous scale of the building.
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