Palace Of The Parliament, Bucharest

The Palace of the Parliament has emerged as an unlikely pillar of Romania's nascent democracy.It's also now a tourist attraction, visited by tens of thousands of Romanians and foreigners every year.

The palace, so big it can be seen from space opened its doors in early 1990.Described by some as a giant Stalinist wedding cake, it's the world's second-largest administrative building after the Pentagon

Parliament and the Constitutional Court are housed inside. But over time the palace has become as much a magnet for glamorous events and celebrity photo-ops as it is a site for government affairs.

Brides pose in front of the yellow-stoned facade, while  weddings, balls, movies and fashion shows and shoots take place inside.

Ceausescu designed the palace to house the government and Parliament after the devastating earthquake of 1977.

A million Romanians, including thousands of soldiers, were enlisted to work around the clock on the construction. Today's tours sample only parts of the building and last just one to two hours, but it would take a day to visit all the rooms and almost an hour just to walk around the perimeter.Petrescu, the chief architect, insists that Buckingham Palace and Versailles were her artistic inspirations, not North Korean architecture, even though Ceausescu sent architects on a visit to Pyongyang to study architecture there after he was inspired during a 1971 visit. She says it's neo-classic in in style, while others diplomatically call the style `'eclectic."

"This building ended up such big due to a technical reason," she insisted. "There were supposed to be three big institutions in here: the presidency, the executive and the legislative corps.

realizado por: Raquel Tshituka y Gabriel Sánchez.