Govt. sets value of Royal Palace in Bucharest at EUR 232 mln

The Royal Palace in downtown Bucharest, which hosts the National Museum of Art of Romania, was valued at RON 1.1 billion (around EUR 232 million) by the government, according to Profit.ro.

The palace has a built area of 10,497 square meters and a related land of 22,372 square meters.

This is the second evaluation made by the Romanian government in less than a week. A government decision recently set the book value of the Parliament Palace, the second-biggest administrative building in the world, at a total of EUR 2.1 billion.

The Royal Palace is located in downtown Bucharest, on Calea Victoriei Blvd. At the beginning of the 19th century, the area where the Royal palace currently stands, which used to belong to the Kretzulescu family, hosted the residence built by Dinicu Golescu between 1812 and 1815. The Golescu Mansion was sold to the Romanian state in 1833, when it became a royal palace for ruler Alexandru Ghica and for his successor, Gheorghe Bibescu.

The palace later turned into the royal residency for Alexandru Ioan Cuza and from 1866 for Carol of Hohenzollern. The latter changed it radically between 1882 and 1885 using the neoclassical architecture features from architect Paul Gottereau.

A new stage of revamping, extensions and more substantial changes followed after the 1926 fire. The National Museum of Art was born from a core set up in one of the palace's wings in 1949.

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