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Exterior of the Palace of the People in Bucharest. The building was constructed between 1984 and 1997 on orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of communist Romania. The structure is the world’s third-largest building by floor area (after the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the Long’ao Building in China) with 1,100 rooms; it consists of 12 floors above ground and 8 floors below. The edifice hosts the two houses of Romania’s Parliament (the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies), three museums, and an international conference center. Nonetheless, about two-thirds of the building remains unoccupied.