The Palace of Parliament - Bucharest, Romania

- 2.55 million cubic meters volume - the third building in the world after the rocket assembly hangar at Cape Canaveral and Quetzalcoatl pyramid in Mexico; it has a bigger volume than the pyramid of Cheope in Egypt

- area of 330.000 square meters - second in the world after Pentagon building

- has a rectangular shape: 270 m (890 ft) by 240 m (790 ft) and 86 m high (282 ft)

- 12 levels above the ground

- 8 underground levels measuring 92 m (302 ft): 4 levels currently available for the general public and another 4 levels in different stages of completion

- 1,100 rooms, 2 underground parking garages comprising 440 offices and 10 conference and meeting halls (three halls between 1,000 and 1,500 square meters each, two halls of over 2,000 square meters each, two meeting halls with a capacity of 1,200 seats and respectively 850 seats)

- the biggest conference hall, Union Hall (Sala Unirii) is 16 m height and has an area of 2200 square meters

- in Union Hall there is the biggest chandelier in the Palace which weights 3 tonnes and has 7000 lighting bulbs.

People's House was built between 1984 and 1989 on Uranus Hill, after the plans of a Romanian group of 200 architects lead by a young architect, Anca Petrescu.

20.000 workers from all over the country joined forces in order to build the enormous building. They worked in three shifts, including weekends.

By the time of the Romanian Revolution (1989), when the communist regime was replaced with a democratic regime, only a few halls and the exterior of the building had been finished. Until 1997, when it became The Palace of Parliament, a big part of the building had been finished.

The building is almost entirely made of materials of Romanian origin: stone, wood and marble.

The interior decorations are also made in Romania, many of them designed specially for this project.

The structure combines elements and motifs from multiple sources, in an eclectic neoclassical architectural style.

Among materials used there are:
- one million cubic meters of marble from Transylvania (Ruschita)
- 3,500 tonnes of crystal - 480 chandeliers
- 1,409 ceiling lights and mirrors
- 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze used for monumental doors and windows, chandeliers and capitals
- 900,000 m2 (9,700,000 sq ft) of wood, over 95% of which is domestic used for parquet and wainscoting (walnut, oak, sweet cherry, elm, sycamore maple)
- 200,000 m2 (2,200,000 sq ft) of woolen carpets of various sizes, the larger of which were woven on-site by machines installed into the building
- velvet and brocade curtains adorned with embroideries and passementeries in silver and gold.

After the big earthquake which took place in 1977, when a lot of buildings were destroyed in the center of Bucharest, Nicolae Ceausescu started to think of the city reconstruction. Between 1978-1979 a national contest was held to choose the best idea. After 4 years, a young 28 years old architect, Anca Petrescu, was named chief architect of the most controversial project ever made in Romania.

They say she won the contest because she was the most obedient among all the participants. Ceausescu was deeply involved in that project and he needed someone who listen to him, not someone with a bold personality.

It is the irony of fate that a building meant to be a symbol of a communist regime and inspired by similar North Korean buildings is now a symbol of a democratic regime.

The leader of the communist regime, president of the communist party, Nicolae Ceausescu, became in his last years a feared dictator.

The Palace intended to be on Ceausescu regime the seat of political and administrative power. Nicolae Ceausescu named it the House of the Republic (Casa Republicii), but many Romanians called it the People's House (Casa Poporului).

The idea to build the House of the Republic entered Ceausescu's mind after he visited his friend, Kim Ir Sen, the North Korean;s leader in 1971. His dream was to transform Bucharest in a political and administrative center similar to Phenian (North Korea's capital city).

Ceausescu laid the cornerstone on the 25th of June 1984 but the construction had began earlier, in 1983, without a final plan in place.

He was involved in all the stages of the project. He supervised very close the architects' and constructors' work and he took almost all the decisions, including those referring to the smallest details. He even didn't let the specialists to do their work, he used to give instructions to architects, to constructors, to workers.

He took all the decisions after he saw the models. A lot of people worked to make models. Each visit of Ceausescu on the site was very carefully prepared and all the participants took notes during his speeches.

The construction of the Palace and of the surroundings avenues required demolishing of a big part of Bucharest's historic district, including 19 Orthodox Christian churches, six Jewish synagogues, three Protestant churches, and 30,000 residences.

The site was unofficially opened in 1980 with the demolishing of over 7 square km of the old Bucharest center and the relocation of over 40.000 people who used to live in this area.

Eight churches were moved on a new place to be saved from demolishing.