Impresion about the Gigantic Palace of The Parliament in Bucharest

After a few weeks of seeing the iconic building from afar, while passing through Unirii Square, I finally got to get a close and an inside look at the Gigantic Palace of The Parliament in Bucharest. I was told that It was part of the top 3 largest buildings in the world in terms of volume, and the distant view did not do it justice. I remember thinking that it looked pretty big, but at the same time, it merged well with the rest of the area. However, the closer I got to the Palace, the more the excitement I was feeling multiplied. It is truly massive, unexpectedly and impressively massive. For a fact, we missed the entrance at first and had to walk from one side of the structure to another which in itself took 10 minutes. The design and architecture on the outside are impressive, with the roads and buildings nearby made to embrace the imposing structure of the Palace.

Palace of The Parliament – A comunist project

The ambitious designs of the architects as well as the ambitious plans Ceaușescu had. The building was monumental from the outside but it is inside that the most impressive things happened for me. Keep in mind that this building is fairly new, and it is still partly under construction: the choices for architectural styles and decorations inside were beautiful. Rooms were and felt huge and grandiose, ranging from theater venue to meeting rooms. We took the official English tour, during which we didn’t spend much time at each station. It is a fairly fast-paced tour so you can expect to see a lot while not getting bored.

We had only seen about 5% of the Palace, and that alone took us over an hour. The building was said to have 21 floors, but it’s worth saying that each floor we have been on had a ceiling twice to three times taller than in regular buildings. The architecture was strongly inspired by French Renaissance Art and other high-viewed styles of Western Europe. According to the tour guide, this likeness led multiple Studios worldwide to choose this as a venue for movies and TV shows, the latest one being ‘The Nun’. The tour was very interesting and informative because, on top of appreciating the beautiful architecture, we got some nice facts Romania, beyond Bucharest alone. Transylvania is the region that produced most of the materials and furniture found in the palace. You can unrestrictedly take pictures which made the tour even more fun.

Talking about that, the guide made sure to include a lot of fun facts like Michael Jackson being one of the first visitors to the Palace or the number of calories the visit made us burn.

I would recommend it to anyone visiting Bucharest!