The Palace of the Parliament
The heaviest building in the world, and the most expensive thing Romania has ever been made to look at. What it cost the city is part of the visit.
- How long to allow
- Two hours on a guided tour
- Best for
- Anyone interested in what political architecture is for
The background
Construction began in 1984, on Ceaușescu’s order, and the building is the heaviest in the world — Guinness World Records puts it at around 4.1 million tonnes, in steel, marble, crystal and wood.
Those numbers are what the tour tells you. The number it tells you less about is the one that matters.
What stood here before
To clear the site and the Civic Centre boulevard leading to it, roughly six square kilometres of historic Bucharest were demolished from 1982 — around nine thousand houses, along with churches, synagogues, monasteries, a hospital and a stadium. Something like thirty thousand people were moved out of their homes.
Some of the churches survived because engineers physically moved them, jacking whole buildings onto rails and rolling them out of the path of the works, sometimes hiding them behind new apartment blocks. Several can still be found tucked behind the facades that were built to conceal them.
How to visit
Access is by guided tour and requires identification. You see a small fraction of it, which is itself instructive.
Go for the scale, and go knowing the second story. A visit that takes in only the marble is a visit that has been managed.
Opening times and tickets
We do not publish opening hours or prices, because they change and a wrong time here is worse than none. The operator keeps the current details.
Official websitePrefer to have the route organised for you?
Guided private trips and custom itineraries are arranged externally, with a local driver-guide.
View private tours