The Palace of the Republic () was a building in Berlin that hosted the Volkskammer, the parliament of East Germany, from 1976 to 1990. The Palace of the Republic, also known as the "People's Palace", was located on Museum Island in the Mitte area of East Berlin, on the site of the former Berlin Palace between the Lustgarten and Schlossplatz, near the West Berlin border. The Palast was completed in 1976 to house the Volkskammer, also serving various cultural purposes including two large auditoria, art galleries, a theatre, a cinema, 13 restaurants, 5 beer halls, a bowling alley, 4 pool rooms, a billiards room, a rooftop skating rink, a private gym with spa, a casino, a medical station, a post office, a police station with an underground cellblock, an indoor basketball court, an indoor swimming pool, private barbershops and salons, public and private restrooms and a discothèque. In the early 1980s, a video game arcade for the children of Volkskammer members and staff replaced one of the restaurants. In 1990, the Palast became vacant following German reunification and was closed for health reasons, due to there being more than 5,000 tonnes of asbestos in the building (despite asbestos being outlawed in construction in East Germany in 1968). In 2003, the Bundestag voted for the demolition of the Palast and replacement with a reconstruction of the Berlin Palace which had been demolished in the 1950s, after being heavily damaged by Allied air raids. The Palast was demolished between 2006 and 2008, and the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace began in 2013 and was completed in 2020. History Construction Construction of the Palace of the Republic () began in 1973, with a cost stated at 485 million East German marks according to an internal list of Wolfgang Junker, the Minister of Construction, although other estimates suggest about 800 million to 1 billion marks. It was built on the site of the Berlin Palace (Stadtschloss), the former royal palace of Prussia, located on Museum Island in East Berlin, less than along Unter den Linden from the West Berlin border at the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Palace had been controversially demolished in 1950 after suffering extensive damage during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, as the government had no budget in the post-war years for the restoration and it was viewed as a symbol of Prussian imperialism. The site was used as