My last day in Bucharest, I headed for a tour of the Parliament Palace and learned a lot about the history of Romania and its Communist past. The large building (340,000 square meters!) which is made almost entirely of marble was built just before the Communist party was overthrown in 1989. While the building itself was finished, there was actually only one room that was finished at this time since it was supposed to be used for the leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his Communist cronies. Even this “finished” room, however, was missing decorations on the walls, though since there was supposed to be a painting of a Romanian flag on one of the walls.
It was very weird being in a building that in so many ways was so intricate in its construction, but was never actually finished. For example, there are over 5,000 chandeliers made of Romanian crystal….it was hard even seeing the inside to understand the money that went into the building. Even to this day, the government can’t afford (or doesn’t make the choice to) to pay for all the lights to be on at all times, so as we went through the tour, the guide turned lights on and off in the different rooms we visited.
Ceausescu wanted everything in the building to be from Romania and almost everything was custom made. In fact, the main staircase in the hallway (large and made of all marble) was built and torn down several times because the stairs were too high for the dictator’s liking. There were many changes such as this made to the building, which is why estimating the actual cost is so difficult.
Most of the carpets in the rooms mirrored the shapes of the chandeliers and some of the marble floors even had meaning. The pattern below mimics the overall layout of the building with the four towers and different wings of the building.
The building now houses some government officials, but also hosts a variety of conferences. The NATO summit in 2008 was hosted in the largest room and another NATO meeting this year was even hosted in one of the rooms that we visited.
I had yet to try some Romanian food, so I stopped at a place called La Mama, which was recommended to me by a local. Basically Romanian food includes lots of sausage so I had “Romanian style beans” with some sausage on top…and this was the small portion (apparently the larger portion has even more meat on it!?).
