The Palace reaches a height of 84 meters, has a floor area of 365,000 square meters and a volume of 2,550,000 cubic meters. The Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest building in the world, weighing about 4,098,500,000 kilograms, and also the second-largest administrative building in the world. (The Great Pyramid of Giza is about 50% heavier.)
Known for its ornate interior composed of 23 sections, the palace houses the two chambers of the Parliament of Romania: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, along with three museums and an international conference center. The museums in the Palace are the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Communist Totalitarianism (established in 2015), and the Museum of the Palace. Though originally named the House of the Republic when under construction (Romanian: Casa Republicii), the palace became widely known as The People’s House after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Due to its impressive characteristics, events organized by state institutions and international bodies such as conferences and symposia take place there, but despite this, about 70% of the building remains empty.
The building has eight underground levels, the deepest housing a nuclear bunker, linked to main state institutions by 20 kilometers of tunnels. Nicolae Ceaușescu feared a nuclear war. The bunker is a room with 1.5-meter thick concrete walls said to be impervious to radiation. The shelter is composed of a main hall – headquarters which would have had telephone connections with all military units in Romania – and several residential apartments for state leadership, to be used in the event of war.
The palace’s floor area of 365,000 square meters makes it the world’s third-largest administrative building after the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C. in the United States and the Sappaya-Sapasathan in Thailand. It is also among the most massive buildings in terms of volume, measuring 2,550,000 cubic meters. For comparison, the building exceeds by 2% the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, leading some sources to label it “pharaonic”.
The Palace of the Parliament has featured in a variety of films, most famously as the Vatican in the 2018 horror film The Nun. Other films include War Dogs, starring Jonah Hill; Dying of the Light, starring Nicolas Cage; and What About Love (2022), starring Sharon Stone and Andy García. It also appeared on an episode of Top Gear in 2009, titled “Romanian GT Road Trip to Find the Transfagarasan Highway”.
According to Wikipedia
