Historical Urban Planning in Romania

By Cindy Campbell, Director of PD&R's International and Philanthropic Affairs Division

I recently went on vacation to Romania. While in Bucharest, I toured the Palace of the Parliament, the largest civil administrative building in the world. Planning for this massive building began in the late 1970s under the Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu. The master plan laid out 31 hectares (approximately 76 acres) in the center of the city. 

Romania is in one of the most seismically active areas in Eastern Europe.  On March 4, 1977, the 7.5 magnitude Vrancea earthquake killed nearly 1,600 people and caused widespread structural damage, particularly in Bucharest. Ceausescu used the earthquake as an excuse to build his mammoth government project, laying out plans not only for his palace but also for the surrounding government buildings for communist party members and housing for the proletariat/nomenklatura. 

To carry out this master plan, Ceausescu chose the safest seismic area in Bucharest, which sustained relatively little damage after the 1977 earthquake. This choice, however, meant removing more than 10,000 houses and displacing more than 50,000 residents. During this time, Romania was trying to move people from villages to large urban apartment blocks to increase productivity. 

The tour guides at the palace discussed Ceausescu’s exacting scrutiny of the building’s construction. He and his wife would visit the construction site regularly to inspect the construction’s progress.  Ceausescu insisted on removing and reconstructing the enormous main stairway entrance because he did not like the way it looked.

Although the exact numbers are hard to verify, between 20,000 and 100,000 workers constructed this building, including 700 architects.  Ceausescu wanted all the materials to come from Romania and all the laborers to be Romanian; many of these workers were forced laborers and soldiers. Ceausescu even ordered the construction of a factory to produce the crystal required for the 2,800 chandeliers adorning the building’s 1,100 rooms. In addition to 7.7 million cubic feet of glass and crystal, the building’s materials include 35 million cubic feet of marble, 1.5 billion pounds of steel and bronze, and 32 million cubic feet of wood.  One room was so large that the carpet had to be made inside the room because the finished product would have been too large to transport. The glass ceiling in the ballroom was designed to be retractable, and legend has it that a helicopter landed in this room.

The building has 10 floors above ground and four underground levels, including a nuclear bunker and a tunnel system. Interestingly, the first two floors of the building do not have air conditioning because Ceausescu worried that someone could poison him through the ventilation system. Walking through the cavernous structure was a surreal experience, and I was able to see only a few of the building’s hundreds of rooms.

Victory of Socialism Boulevard, now known as Bulevardul Unirii, was part of the master redesign plan for the city. I walked down this tree-lined boulevard, which is wider and longer than the Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris. Ten-story apartment buildings housing the communist elite, grand and luxurious despite the need for some upkeep, run the length of the boulevard. 

Ceausescu didn’t live to see the completion of the Palace of the Parliament. He was in the communist headquarters building in central Bucharest when the Romanian Revolution took place in 1989. Ceausescu and his wife were tried and then executed on December 25, 1989. 

The current leadership of Romania plans to commemorate the destruction of the community that once stood on the site of the Palace of the Parliament, including the housing, churches, and a monastery. The government is planting trees and installing plaques where the community’s streets were to show where people lived before Ceausescu razed the neighborhood. As I walked out of the building towards the main boulevard, I could see the initial stages of the project. 

The building was completed in 1997. If you are ever in Bucharest, consider making a visit.