Watch Out Versailles

A few years ago I had the pleasure of walking around Versailles and its grounds and today I had the dubious opportunity to walking around a modern seat of government that puts Versailles a little in the shade - the second biggest building in the world after the Pentagon. It is the Parliament building in Bucharest ... commenced by Nicolae Ceaesescu a few years before the revolutions of 1989 swept communist governments from power and led to his own execution. The following external views show the something of the dimensions of this monumental folly - were not allowed to photograph the interior. We visited it from the nearby university where my second conference started this morning - I gave a keynote address.

Before the pictures, I'd just like to say that everything about this building is over the top. It has dozens of ornate rooms with massive floor-spaces (including a ballroom the size of a soccer pitch), guilded walls and ceilings, gold leaf in many places, intricate wooden floors, huge carpets, marble everywhere, enormous chandeliers, huge corridors, grand marble staircases, artworks and statues, and so on. It cost billions of dollars for a poor country and has absolutely nothing to do with communism as a philosophy. Rather, it reflects the megalomania of one deluded imbecile who had visions of personal grandeur. It makes no sense now; nor did it in the middle of the 1990s when completed.

Well here it is. Enjoy, or should I say deride. Here's the monument itself.

And the views from the roof across Bucharest. Note the boulevard and other formal gardens radiating from the communist 'palace'.

Not to forget monumental and simultaneously forbidding facades:

And for shuddering moment I stood on the balcony, similar to the one the Queen uses at Buckingham Palace, and imagined that I was Ceaesescu addressing the adoring crowd about the wonders of socialism. At this point I remembered that he was booed and fled to his death in a helicopter!

At this point, I sobered up and took a few more pictures of grandiose columns.

What an embarrassment for the locals!

AS