You can’t buy style

It may be the second largest building in the world, but it also has to be one of the ugliest.

We arrived back at Bucharesti Nord pretty much on time, unceremoniously awoken by the carriage attendant. This was a bit of a shame, it was 6.30am, we could have done with a couple of hours delay. We staggered onto the platform. We had two options; straight back to Dora or wait around for a tour of ‘The People’s Palace’.

We left the rucksacks back in left luggage and headed for town and eventually the peoples palace and are we glad we did.

The first tour didn’t start until 10.00am so we had a few hours to kill. One of those was already allocated, we just needed to find a coffee shop.

We wandered down in the general direction of the palace anyway, it would be good to be in the right area.

Ceausescu wanted this big, and it is. It is only second in size to the pentagon and that is a pretty ugly monstrosity, this one however takes ugly to new levels, in ways you thought ugly couldn’t aspire to.

It is an attempt at some sort of neo classicism, but whoever designed it has never had any sort of education so that everything is wrong. The proportions, the order, the size of window. In fact the architect was Anca Petrescu, and she was only 28 years old when she started the project.

Really odd, all those small windows stuck between the large ones at the top and bottom. It looks like the middle layer has been squashed by the overbearing weight of the upper sandwich.

Maybe that was the concept.

I am no lover of Neo-classicism or for that matter classicism, which this isn’t. Maybe you might think this is post modernism and the architects were being ironic, maybe they were secretly laughing at Nicolae.

If  they were, it was a cruel joke which the whole population ended up paying for, it cost €3,000,000,000 in 1997. Oh, and by the way there were 700 architects working on the project and it looks like you got 700 different opinions, under one cohesive shroud of ugliness.

The numbers are frightening;

270m long, 240m wide, 86m high

16 storeys, 4 below ground

340,000 square metres

1,100 rooms

and it took thirteen years to build (they should have taken more time!)

and it is all just so superfluous.

Susana was getting bored at me ogling and critiquing the building. She wanted a coffee.

A large avenue stretches away from the palace a few metres wider and longer than the Avenue des Champs Elysees.

Susana made the point that you cannot make something more beautiful, it is just subjective, but you can make something bigger, wider higher or longer, everyone will agree. This invariable makes it less beautiful, especially if you have no regard for proportion.

Actually the avenue wasn’t too unpleasant, that is, until you turned around to see the monstrosity behind.

Even a kilometre or two away it still looms and dominates the whole area.

We eventually find somewhere that is open and we can sit down. You cannot believe how difficult it is to get a coffee in Bucharesti in the morning. It is now 8:30 and the city is waking up with all those lucky commuters heading for work. We have our own work of sorts, sightseeing, but first coffee. The only place open, Starbucks! Well actually not open, they should be, ten minutes ago in fact, we stare through the window and eventually they unlock the door. The most expensive coffee in a long while.

We start heading back to the palace, we want to be at the front of any queue.

We make our way through the back streets, not so much attention is paid to these elevations.

This was all completed at the same time as the Palace as government offices, many now look closed and pretty derelict.

Perhaps some are residences looking at the filled in balconies, so bizarre.

We are still a little early so take another walk around the building to admire it from every angle.

But it doesn’t matter where you stand it always looks horrific.

We are first in the queue, but can you believe it, a tour group has block booked the first tour. We had emailed but got a standard email response back giving opening hours etc. Apparently two cannot book, only groups. How ridiculous is that. We have to wait another hour for the next one at 11.00. Also the upper terrace is closed, we later find out, due to lift failure, we will have to visit the basement instead.

We head for a nearby park where a young women is learning how to ride a horse. It seems she is like us, no job trying to fill her day with something, she trots around the sandy rectangle for close on an hour, wonder if her arse is as sore as ours were.

At last the tour starts. The opulence is overwhelming, not in a good sense.

Apparently everything is from Romania; the marble, the timber, the crystal for the chandeliers, the carpets for the floors. It must of employed a good proportion of the population for many years. Presumably they are all now unemployed. They stripped the country bare of natural resources, apparently there is no marble left and they must have felled pretty much every oak tree, all for the vanity of one man.

The largest chandelier in the building, in a room designed as a theatre. One problem, no backstage. The stage goes directly out into the corridor. It would have never worked as a theatre. The utter stupidity.

There is however a room above the chandelier so that it can be cleaned and the bulbs replaced. They don’t need to bother with that now as they cannot afford the electricity bill, so they keep it turned off!

Here it comes my accountancy question: how much does it cost to maintain this building yearly? He doesn’t know. But he is aware that the electricity only bill costs €1 billion. Clearly, this building has left he country highly indebted for years to come. SM.

You will get a lot of photos like this. Camera flashes won’t work over long distances, better use a long exposure so you need a steady hand or rest the camera on something, in this case the floor.

Quite like the way the photo over emphasises the enormous proportions of the corridor.

Every detail, overly ornate, every form of dazzle or bling. Every precious stone, metal or crystal was use in this building.

He never got to see it finished. It took a further five years to complete after they hung him.

And he was never going to live there. It was essentially a government building for meeting dignitaries. The waste is staggering.

But also is the quality of the workmanship. Both in the architectural detail and how the materials are put together. The building is literally falling apart in places it has been so badly designed and constructed.

But the biggest waste is the scale, everything big for bigness sack.

No joy at all in the small.

The longest curtains in the world! How do they know, who should really care

The second largest chandelier in the building. This one they can afford to turn on, for the time being?

They have made changes to the building, a small TV studio sits alongside one of the corridors, wires drape dangerously across all of the floors and down the staircases to accommodate the technology. No thought was given to how the building might be used in the future, no spare ducting for the wires!

Some of the craftsmanship is admirable, yet the veneers are peeling and warped in places.

And some of the roof lights,

and ceilings are incredible in their detail and execution.

From the balcony you get to appreciate that extra length and extra width. The French must be livid.

Our guide has been fantastic, very funny. It is difficult to ascertain how he really feels about the building; admiration or disgust, at least it provides him with a job.

We head back to the station. We cannot find the right bus stop, when we do it is an hour wait. We take the train instead, pick up Dora and head north.

GDR