Over the course of history there have been a number of parliament buildings engulfed by flames.

The United Kingdom Parliament

The United Kingdom Parliament building burned in 1834. The fire was caused by tally sticks.

The account of this historic event in 1834 is due to the English novelist Charles Dickens, as described in a book by Tobias Dantzig. Speaking at a conference on governmental reform, Dickens told how counting devices destroyed "the halls of government".

Long before Dickens' time, literate clerks of The Exchequer ceased to use tally sticks. In 1724, treasury officials commanded that tallies no longer be used, but they long remained valid.

Said Dickens:

"... it took until 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 ... there was a considerable accumulation of them. ... [W]hat was to be done with such worn-out worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? The sticks were housed in Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood by the miserable people who lived in that neighborhood. However [the sticks were no longer] useful and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went out that they should be privately and confidentially burned. It came to pass that they were burned in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses [of government] were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; and we are now in the second million of the cost thereof."

The new Houses of Parliament, designed by Sir Charles Barry, with neo-Gothic detailing by A.W.N. Pugin, celebrated "open house" in 1844. Though Dickens deplored their cost, they are among the most familiar landmarks of London.

The English landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), painted the burning of the Houses of Parliament while this was in progress.

Reference

Number, the language of science, Tobias Dantzig, Free Press, New York, 1967.

Canada

Canada has lost two parliaments. In the 1849 Montreal Riots an angry mob torched the parliament buildings located in Montreal. In 1916 an accidental fire consumed the parliament buildings in Ottawa.

Germany

The 1933 Reichstag fire was a pivotal event in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

See also

• Guy Fawkes - who failed to blow up the British Houses of Parliament in 1605, but is still commemorated each year with bonfires.
• List of historic fires