When the building rose between 1836 and 1843, Greece was a brand-new nation governed by an imported monarch. Otto, the seventeen-year-old son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, had been placed on the Greek throne by the great powers of Europe, and his father paid for a residence to match the ambition. The Bavarian architect Friedrich von Gärtner designed it: three stately floors of pale stone, completed in 1843. For decades it served exactly its intended purpose, a royal home overlooking the square the Athenians named Syntagma, meaning constitution. The irony was earned. In September of 1843, the army and the people gathered in that very square and forced Otto to grant Greece its first constitution, the moment that gave the plaza its name.

A fire gutted the palace in 1909, and for years the scorched building drifted between uses, serving at various points as a hospital and a museum while the royal family moved to a newer palace one block east. The monarchy itself was abolished by referendum in 1924, restored, and abolished again, and through all of it the old palace stood empty of clear purpose. Then, in November 1929, the government decided the building would house Parliament for good. After heavy renovation, lawmakers took their seats beneath a glass roof in a chamber paneled in purple and white marble inlaid with gold, the seating curved in five circular sectors so that every member faces the speaker. A balcony that once held the royal box now holds the public, watching their representatives argue.

In front of the building, where a palace would normally flaunt its grandeur, Greece chose instead to honor its anonymous dead. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was begun in 1929 and inaugurated on March 25, 1932, a date that is also Greek Independence Day. A relief of a fallen warrior is carved into the wall, surrounded by the names of battlefields where Greeks have died. The Evzones guard it around the clock, performing a slow, deliberately exaggerated changing-of-the-guard ceremony in their traditional foustanella uniforms. The stillness is the point. A soldier who cannot be identified stands for every soldier who could not come home, and the guard's refusal to so much as blink is a form of national remembering.

Inside, the work of democracy grinds on with all its messy machinery. Three hundred members are elected for four-year terms, debating bills that move through committee in two readings before reaching the floor. The Parliament runs its own television channel, Vouli TV, which broadcasts every session and, when business is done, fills the airwaves with opera, ballet, and old films. Each summer the building hosts a junior parliament, where high school students from Greece, Cyprus, and the diaspora take the floor to debate while the actual lawmakers sit and listen. It is a fitting use for a palace that became a parliament: a place built to elevate one borrowed king, now devoted to teaching the next generation how to govern themselves.