The press isn’t giving much love to the new $621 million Capitol Visitor Center that opened today at the U.S. Capitol. No one is happy about the cost – the project was simply intended to provide more space for visitors out of the elements. The place was supposed to open four years ago, too.

It’s not that the underground museum isn’t magnificent – it’s just a little too magnificent.

At 580,000 square feet, the tax-payer funded project has taken on it’s own “pomposity” that outdoes the Capitol, The Washington Post writes. The “pastoral” side of the Capitol where “you could stand on the east side and imagine cows and sheep grazing, as if in the foreground of a romantic landscape painting,” is no longer so rustic now that the CVC is there, undoing a balance of grandeur and simplicity in the architecture.

To survive, a republic must have authority, tradition and ceremonies. But it must also have its yeoman side, which allows the people to wander the halls of power as equals with their legislators.

It is a historical and aesthetic jumble, a nonsensical place and a gross disfigurement of one of this country’s most important and iconic buildings.

The Washington Times, too, writes that the museum is a historical jumble – with exhibits editing the Constitution even, attributing powers to Congress that are disputed. A scholar on the Constitution said,

The visitor center selectively cuts passages from the Constitution, weighing in on a long-running debate about the scope and limits of federal power by taking the liberal side of that debate, envisioning broad congressional powers that the Founding Fathers never intended.

There’s also this:

Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, fought to have the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto, “In God We Trust,” added to the displays.

You can see photos of the $621 million at work here.