Qualla: Palace of the Parliament https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Palace of the Parliament https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament Palace of the Parliament: Introduction https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit Al at Dutch Wikipedia, Public domain. Forty thousand people lost their homes for it. Around three thousand Orthodox monks were driven from monasteries that were demolished, dynamited, or buried inside concrete bunkers to make room for it. Workers died building it, the official figure of 27 widely disbelieved by those who labored on the site, who speak of hundreds and sometimes thousands. It rises 84 meters above central Bucharest and sinks 92 meters into the earth, weighs about four million tonnes, contains 365,000 square meters of floor space and a thousand rooms. It is the heaviest building in the world, the largest civilian administrative building in the world, and the second-largest administrative building of any kind after the Pentagon. Romanians have spent thirty-five years figuring out how to feel about it.

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Image: Al at Dutch Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Palace of the Parliament: The Earthquake That Gave Him a Pretext https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit Jorge Láscar from Australia, CC BY 2.0. On 4 March 1977, the Vrancea earthquake struck Bucharest with a magnitude of 7.4, killing more than 1,500 people and damaging much of the old city center. Nicolae Ceausescu, who six years earlier had returned from a state visit to North Korea deeply impressed by Pyongyang's monum...

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Image: Jorge Láscar from Australia | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-the-earthquake-that-gave-him-a-pretext.mp3 0:06 2 full Palace of the Parliament: What Was Demolished https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit Stefan Didam - Schmallenberg, CC BY 2.5. Approximately seven square kilometers of historic Bucharest were demolished to clear the site and the boulevard leading to it. This was about a fifth of the old city. The Uranus-Izvor neighborhood, with its 19th-century apartments and shops, was razed beginning in 1982. The 16th-...

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Image: Stefan Didam - Schmallenberg | CC BY 2.5

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-what-was-demolished.mp3 0:06 3 full Palace of the Parliament: The Workers and the Cost https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit European People's Party, CC BY 2.0. Between 20,000 and 100,000 people worked on the building at any given time, in three shifts that included 5,000 Romanian Army soldiers and large numbers of so-called volunteers, many of them ordered to the site by their workplaces or their party cells. Some were prisoners. Some w...

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Image: European People's Party | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-the-workers-and-the-cost.mp3 0:06 4 full Palace of the Parliament: The Materials of Romania https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit European People's Party, CC BY 2.0. Almost everything in the palace is Romanian. The building used 1,000,000 cubic meters of marble, more than 95 percent of it domestic. There are 480 chandeliers using 3,500 tonnes of crystal, plus 1,409 ceiling lights and countless mirrors. Manufacturing the chandeliers alone took...

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Image: European People's Party | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-the-materials-of-romania.mp3 0:06 5 full Palace of the Parliament: What Romania Did With It https://qualla.com/palace-of-the-parliament/ Photo credit Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ceausescu was executed on Christmas Day 1989, ten days after the revolution began. The palace was about 70 percent finished. Romania had to decide what to do with it. In 1990, Rupert Murdoch reportedly offered a billion dollars to buy it. The offer was rejected. Since 1994, the l...

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Image: Stefan Jurca from Munich, Germany | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/f/s/palace-of-the-parliament-wp/sxfs-palace-of-the-parliament-what-romania-did-with-it.mp3 0:06 6 full