Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest

Construction of what was originally called the Palace of the Republic began in 1983, the cornerstone laid on 25 June 1984. Romanian Communist Party leader Ceaușescu had seen the monumental architecture of North Korea on a visit to fellow dictator Kim Il-sung, and had decided that his palace would rival anything else in its scale and opulence. 2.7 square miles of Bucharest, home to monasteries, a hospital, 37 factories and workshops, and 40,000 people, were demolished to make way for this vision.

With 3,930,000 square feet of floor space, the palace is the third largest administrative building in the world, after The Pentagon (Virginia, USA) and the Long'ao Building (Jinan city, China). At over 90 million cubic feet, it is the third most voluminous building in the world, after the Rocket Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, USA, and the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, in Mexico. The palace is the heaviest building in the world, weighing in at over four million tons, and as a consequence sinks about a quarter of an inch per year.

Between 20,000 and 100,000 people, working 24 hours a day, in three shifts, were forced to undertake the construction. Thousands died. Over 700 architects, under chief architect Anca Petrescu, were engaged in the work, but had a largely technical role, with the megalomaniac Ceaușescus interfering at every stage.

885 feet wide, 790 feet front to back, the building stands 276 feet tall. It has a footprint of over 710,000 square feet. Of twelve above-ground storeys, in three registers, plus eight underground levels, the palace contains over 1,100 rooms, of which just 400 or so are in use. Although the exterior was completed in 1997, hundreds of rooms remain unfinished.

Some of the principal rooms and halls of the first register, the most opulent, can be visited by the public. In this register alone there are about 20 rooms of 2,000 to 7,500 square feet; three of 10,000 to 15,000 square feet; two of over 21,000 square feet (Union Hall, photo above, boasts over 23,000 square feet); two vast meeting rooms, seating 850 and 1,200 respectively; and the two official apartments intended, one suite each, for Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu.

The construction material quantities are gargantuan: 35 million cubic feet of marble, 550,000 tons of cement, two million tons of sand, 1,000 tons of basalt, 700,000 tons of steel, 3,500 tons of crystal, seven million cubic feet of glass, 32 million cubic feet of wood, 2.3 million square feet of carpet. There are 4,500 chandeliers, of an intended 11,000.

And the materials used are of the highest quality, largely from Romania: pink and white Rușchița marble, red and black Moneasa marble; sweet cherry, walnut, mahogany and oak. Yet the quality of the work leaves much to be desired. Despite the obsessive reworking required by the Ceaușescus - Elena had the monumental paired stairs built three times over - the joints and junctions are poorly executed, the chandeliers are missing drops, the carpets are twisted.

The whole place has an air of pointless extravagance. It was known by Romanians, most of whom were living in a peasant economy, as the Madman's House. And mad it is. The Rosetti Room, built as a performance hall, seating 850 - photo above - lacks a backstage area and has a tiny stage, such that it's never been used for the presentation of a play.

Since the 1989 revolution that deposed Ceaușescu, when the building was renamed the Palace of the People, Romania has struggled to find uses for a structure that, on the one hand, is a ridiculous folly, yet, on the other, was built at great cost, both financial and human, and might as well be pressed into use. Now called the Palace of the Parliament, it presently houses the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, an international conference centre, the Constitutional Court, and the Legislative Council, with space to spare.