Bucharest is unusual as a European capital in that it does not have a castle or palace in the centre of it. Think of Prague or London and you’ll see what I mean – these things are the prime features of those cities. But it does have the next best thing.

In the 1980s, Ceaușescu was still in power and he wanted to build something impressive. The Palace of the Parliament was born as an idea. The sheer scale of the building was what he wanted to impress visiting dignitaries with. The building took years to finish – and was completed after the fall of Communism. It is an exercise in mind-boggling numbers that makes you wander the corridors of the building in astonishment.

These are the top 10 reasons to go on a tour of the building itself:

1. It is huge. H U G E. Think of a big building, and I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than that. The floor area is 360,000 square metres. The only building larger than the Palace of the Parliament is the Pentagon. It was originally envisaged as a place where the whole of government could be housed but that idea was discarded soon enough. Now, it houses the Parliament, the Office of the President, the Romanian Senate, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the oddly named Museum and Park of Totalitarianism and Socialist Realism and the Romanian Competition Council. And close to 30% of it is unused.

2. The building is 240 metres long, 270 metres wide, 86m high and 92m deep. The bottom underground levels are still under construction. No one knows for sure but authorities estimate that 20,000 workers toiled in 24-hour shifts, seven days a week, to build it.
3. The entire building – inside and out – is a testament to the Romanians’ skill and creativity. Romanians quarried, designed, sewed, crafted and built everything to Romanian designs and specifications. I am hard pressed to think of a single building that exhibits another nation’s skill in the same way.

4. It is the heaviest building on earth. There are 700,000 metric tons of steel and bronze. 1,000,000 cubic metres of Transylvanian marble cover the surfaces. 3,500 metric tons of crystal glass make up 480 chandeliers. 900,000 cubic metres of wood (walnut, oak, cherry, elm and sycamore maple) are woven into the designs.

5. The interior is no less impressive: 200,000 square metres of carpet, in wool, of various dimensions. Some of them are so large that they moved machines into the building to weave them in place.
6. The underground car park has space for 20,000 cars.

7. Apart from all the offices listed above, it also has rooms used for concerts, meetings, conferences and galas. In 2004, it housed a NATO summit in the Union Hall which is the largest room in the building. This room is notable for a sliding glass ceiling that can support the weight of a helicopter.
8. To build the palace, Ceaușescu demolished most of Bucharest’s historical districts. This included 19 Orthodox churches, 6 synagogues, 3 Protestant churches and 30,000 homes. He razed a fifth of the city to the ground for this project.

9. The curtains on the main staircase were hand-woven in monasteries around Bucharest. Each single curtain weighs around 250 kg.
10. The network of underground tunnels is so vast, that in 2009, Top Gear staged a race in them.