The Chamber of Deputies and Google Romania launched on Thursday the online platform where anyone with a connection to the Internet can virtually visit the Parliament’s Palace and the Parliament’s Museum.

“It is a virtual tour of some of the Palace’s beautiful rooms, which were built with the effort of Romanian craftsmen, from 1980 until 2013 when this investment was completed, and we’ve tried to present the Palace of the Parliament’s works of art, the heritage, but also the rooms that we have here,” said Valeriu Zgonea, president of the Chamber of Deputies, cited by local Agerpres.

He also said that the Palace belonged to the people and it might be easier for them to visit it on the Internet.

“People from the Google Cultural Institute have chosen the halls covered by this virtual tour, together with a team from the Parliament’s Palace, based on the guides’ experience, the effort put into building these halls, and their specificity,” Zgonea said.

Those interested can visit some of the Palace’s halls, such as Nicolae Iorga, Unirii, Take Ionescu, and Al. I. Cuza. Moreover, the users can also visit the Parliament’s Museum and admire a series of works of art from the Palace’s collection, published in the collection presented on the platform. Some 150 works signed by well-known Romanian artists such as Nicolae Grigorescu, Octav Bancila, and Corneliu Baba have been digitized,

The Parliament’s Palace, also known as People’s House, is the world’s largest administrative building (for civilian use) and the second-largest building in the world after the Pentagon in the US. Built at the order of late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the Parliament’s Palace has a developed area of 350,000 sqm and is housing the Romanian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. It also contains several conference and exhibition halls and salons that are used for a wide variety of other purposes.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: print screen Google.com/culturalinstitute)