Palatul Regal

The Palatul Regal, officially the Ministry of Internal Affairs building, stands on Revolution Square in Bucharest and today houses the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The design was created by the architects Paul Smărăndescu, Petre H. Ionescu, and Emil Nadejde, who refined the project over many years. Parliament approved it in 1912, but construction did not begin until 1938, on the orders of King Carol II. Inspired by buildings in Berlin and Bratislava, the project was interrupted by World War II and not completed until 1949. During the Communist era, the building first served the Ministry of Internal Affairs before becoming the seat of the party's Central Committee in 1958. It was here that Nicolae Ceaușescu gave his famous 1968 speech against the Warsaw Pact troops, and in 1989 he fled from here by helicopter during the revolution. Between 1945 and 1964, political prisoners were held in the basement. After the revolution, the building housed the Senate until 2006, when it reverted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.