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When first built in 1843, today’s Greek Parliament building (Vouli) was designed as an imposing palace for imported and unwanted King Otto Wittlesbach, a 17 year old Bavarian prince and son of King Ludwig of Bavaria. King Ludwig ran out of money and the Bavarian state architect, Friedrich von Gartner, complained that the resulting structure, without his proposed but unaffordable decorative embellishment, looked like an army barracks. The building is a representative sample of the early period of Neoclassicism in Greece, and it is a work of strict geometry in its mass.