THE MOLDOVAN PARLIAMENT

The building housing the Moldovan Parliament, built between 1976 and 1979 by the architects Alexandru Cerdanțev and Grigore Bosenco, was originally designed to house the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova. This "open-book" building was reassigned in the 1990s to temporarily house part of the presidential administration and to serve as the seat of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, the successor to the former Supreme Soviet of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. The building is made of reinforced concrete, its facade is made of pink granite slabs and its base is made of marble and red granite slabs. The two wings of the building meet in its centre, characterized by four vertical pillars covering the entire height of the building and a main entrance above which is inscribed the name of the institution. On 7 April 2009, following fraudulent election results in favour of the current communist government, demonstrators gathered in the surrounding streets to protest, before entering Parliament in force and occupying it. The demonstration turned into a riot and the building was damaged and then burned down. Restoration work began in the summer of 2009 but was slowed down by lack of funds and resumed in 2012 to be completed in 2013. In the fall of 2015, dozens of tents set up across the street from Parliament to denounce corruption and the missing "billion dollars".