Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania

Romania’s Palace of the Parliament is 276 feet high, has 1,100 rooms, and takes up an area of 3.9 million square feet — and the locals hate every inch of it. To start, the project was undertaken by Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu in an effort to mimic the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — so that’s two strikes right away. It also cost some 3 billion euros to build, claimed the lives of almost 3,000 construction workers (mostly forced laborers), and currently consumes more energy than a city of 250,000 people. On top of all this, the monstrosity is not particularly easy on the eyes either. Efforts have been made recently to shake off the Communist past of the now-democratic Romania by adding appealing attractions to the location — such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004 — but too many still see the building as a much-too-obvious symbol of the country’s perilous past.