The Bastion of the Tailors (Romanian: Bastionul Croitorilor) is a part of the medieval fortress that was built in Cluj-Napoca in the 15th century. The bastion was rebuilt later, between years 1627 and 1629, and was furnished into the existing form. It is the only segment of the fortress that remained integral.
The name of the construction comes from the tailors, which defended the city into this period.
It is a beautiful and perfect place to stroll and to admire the history.
The Bastion of the Tailors is located in the south-east corner of the old Cluj-Napoca citadel. It was built in the 15th century and rebuilt between 1627 and 1629, assuming its present form. It was named after the Tailors' Guild, who took care of and guarded this part of the city. Near the tower — where Baba Novac, the general of Mihai Viteazul and Saski priest, was killed in 1601 by General Basta — there is a statue of Baba Novac.
Deserted until 2007, the municipality of Cluj-Napoca undertook to include the tower in the city's touristic itinerary, financing its restoration.
The tower is now a Center for Urban Culture, based on a project offered by the Transylvanian Branch of the Architects’ Chamber of Romania in collaboration with the Bureau of Architecture and Urbanism (BAU). The Centre will host an exhibition space on the ground floor, a library and a conference room on the upper floors.
It is one of the oldest and most important university libraries from Romania. In the building there are 55 reading rooms with 2100 places. Many valuable Book collections, and numerous rare exhibits, belong to the property of the institution. The library was erected in 1872, and at the beginning, it functioned into the university buildings. In the year 1906 was built the new construction from the library. The book property of the library is approximately of three million volumes.
Visit schedule: Wed - Sun 10:00a.m - 17:00p.m; Closed Mon & Tues Admission charge: 3 lei
About it
The 22 halls of the museum display sculptures, graphics, weapons, furniture, carpets, and paintings by famous Romanian artists such as Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907), Theodor Aman (1831-1891) and Theodor Pallady (1871-1956). Both Grigorescu and Aman were influenced by the Barbizon group and the Impressionists, while Pallady spent many years in Paris and drew inspiration from Matisse.
Founded in 1951, the National Museum of Art in Cluj-Napoca has a rich and various collection of Romanian and European art, mainly painting, graphical works and decorative art, from the 15th to the 20th century, surely worth a visit even if you're not an art fanatic. Initially, the first collections of the museum were older ones: some of the furniture, paintings and unusual objects from the “Ardeal Museum” and most of the collection known as "Virgil Cioflec Art Gallery".
The building where the museum is hosted is also an impressive work of art, a Baroque massive architectural triumph, created in the 18th century by the German architect Johann Eberhard Blaumann. The upper floor of the building is reserved for the National Gallery, which was closed down in 1990 for ample works of renovation and rearranging the works. Through careful planning, the exhibition space became much more generous, and today it is a joy to visit the National Gallery. Opened only in 1996, the new National Gallery was a modern art museum, with 325 works of art - paintings and sculptures - providing an exhaustive presentation of the evolution of Romanian art over the course of four centuries, naturally focusing on the artists from Transylvania.
The Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca is an impressive cultural landmark of the city and of Transylvania, as it brings together some of the best works ever made here, with careful order and intelligence, as to emphasize the originality and talent of the artists. From the works of the Romanian masters to new artists, from permanent to temporary exhibitions, it is a great place to start discovering Romanian art.
Sf. Mihail Roman Catholic Church is a beautiful construction, placed in the centre of Cluj-Napoca, in the middle of the Unirii Square. It is one of the most imposing churches in Gothic style from Romania, and the second largest church in Transylvania (after the Black Church of Brasov). The construction of the church began in the year 1316 and lasted until 1390. The second part of the construction works started in 1410 and lasted until 1487.
The church has a height of 50 meters, a length of 70 meters and a width of 24 meters. The existing clock tower of the church was built between years 1837-1860 and has a height of 80 m. It is the highest church tower in Romania. This church is a very important objective in Cluj-Napoca and an attraction to all visitors that come to this city.
The main porch, sculpted in 1528 in German Renaissance style, presents in its central part the chiseled image of Archangel Mihail. It has remarkable interior and exterior decoration and pulpit with baroque sculptures. The colored window glass and the mural painting from the 15th century with northern Italian stylistic influence show the first signs of the Renaissance in the painting of Cluj. The equestrian statue of King Mathias Corvine (1458-1490) from the front of the church, surrounded by a group of warriors was realized in 1902.
The church was Protestant between 1545-1566, and Unitarian in the period 1566-1716, after that it was re-confiscated by the Catholic Church during the counter-reformation.
The oldest of its sections is the altar, inaugurated in 1390, while the newest part is the clock tower, which was built in Gothic Revival style between 1837 and 1862.
Address: Str. Mihail Kogalniceanu 16, Cluj-Napoca (locate on map)
About it
The Reformed church is situated on the Kogalniceanu Street and is called also The Reformed Matthias church. In the year 1486, it was built as Minority cloister church. Later, it was handed over to the Jesuits. In the year 1603, it was strongly damaged, because of the disputes between the Catholics. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the church was reconstructed. The statue of St. George stands in front of the church.
It is the biggest gothic single-room church from Eastern Europe, well-known for its acoustics. It was built upon order of Mathias Corvine, and finished during the 16th century.
Rarities
-renaissance pulpit
-furniture from the 15th century
-Rococo-style organ from 1766
-the funerary monuments of Apafy family
In the southern part of the construction are the ruins of the Claustrum, where once was a prestigious European university college.
The Statue of "Saint George Killing the Dragon" in front of the Reformed Church is a copy of the first and most famous equestrian statues of the early European Renaissance realized by sculptors of Cluj in 1373, upon order of Carol IV, for the King Palace of Prague (where the original one is situated).
The Memorandum Monument is a new construction that was installed in centre of the city, in year 1994. It was built as honour for the memorandum people, the Romanian-national faction of the nineteen Century, which were sentenced to the prison in the year 1894, for their ideals.
This monument is placed into the Unirii Square on the beginning of the Heroes Boulevard.
The existing building of the theatre is the creation of the architects Helmer and Fellner, and was built between the years 1904 and 1906, in the new baroque style. The national theatre was opened on the 18th of September 1919. The first director of the institution was the tenor Constantin Pavel.
Into these buildings function:
- The national theatre
- The national opera
- The conservatory of music
The theatre is located in the centre of the city, into the Stefan cel Mare Square.
The construction was raised in 1906, in baroque-rococo style, but the National Theatre and the Romanian Opera were inaugurated in 1919, with a capacity of 1050 seats. The National Theatre is the biennale organizer of the Romanian National Theatres Gala, meant in the near future as an event for all national theatres from Central and Eastern Europe. The Romanian Opera is the oldest Romanian lyric-dramatic institute, its repertoire counts over 200 international and Romanian opera, operetta and ballet titles.
Address: Bontida village, Cluj county, approx. 30 km from Cluj-Napoca(locate on map)
About it
At a distance of almost 32 kilometers from Cluj is a small village called Bontida, famous around these places for the Banffy Castle, with a starting construction date in 1437. The castle was started by the Venetian architect Agostino Serena, and continued by Joseph Emmanuel Fischer von Erlach, who remodeled it in a baroque style, also adding to it two more U-shaped wings. The last wing was added in 1850, by the architect called A. Kagerbauer.
The castle was owned by the Banffy family, one of the wealthiest families at that time, a dynasty that reconstructed the edifice several times, going from the Renaissance style in 1680 to baroque in 1747. The baroque remodeling was ordered by Denes Banffy, the familly head of that time.
The Banffy dynasty appeared at the beginning of the 15th century in Transylvania. One of their greatest palaces was located in Cluj, followed by the one at Bontida. This dynasty was separated in two branches, one that brought a barony during the 1660s and two centuries later, the other became counts. Jozsef Banffy rebuilt completely the courtyards, park and gardens during the year 1820.
Unfortunately, during World War II the castle was damaged by the retreating German troops that ravaged it: the furniture, library and all the portraits were lost. A visitor can see the former interiors – before the soldiers went through the castle – only in the archive photographs. When the communists came to power, it was nationalized, but the communist regime didn't invest too much money and time in restoring the Bontida Banffy castle. Some restoration was made in 1960 but then the communist regime left the castle in dereliction.
The Banffy Castle is being restored since 2000, by Transylvania Trust, The Institute of Historic Building Conservation – IHBC and the National Office for Cultural Heritage in Hungary and many other institutions that co-operated in bringing back this castle to its former name of “Versailles of Transylvania”. Since 2000, it appeared on the World Monuments Watch list as one of the most one hundred endangered sites of that year.
If you want to attend a cultural event at this castle, you should head to Romania in the 8th - 14th September interval, as an educational program will take place there, called “SoNoRo – Interferente".
"SoNoRo - Interferente" is an initiative to improve the professional level of Romanian musicians by studying chamber music along with popular artists and teachers from different music academies from all over Europe. So don't miss it if you're interested in such cultural events set in fascinating places.
If you visit the city of Cluj-Napoca, you are likely to be charmed by the patrimony of the most beautiful and complex Botanical Garden in Europe. It was founded in 1872 and reorganized in 1920 by Professor Alexandru Borza and it spreads over 14 ha with different specific areas. The National Botanical Museum inside the Botanical Garden counts over 11000 exhibits from all over the world.
Attractions
- The Japanese Garden
- The Roman Garden (improved with statues and Roman vestiges)
- Green-houses (3500 square meters with equatorial, tropical and subtropical plants)
- The Botanical Museum (6900 pieces)
- Herbarium of the University (635000 pages with samples from Romanian and international flora)
The Botanical Garden (officially the Botanical Garden of the Babes-Bolyai University) in Cluj-Napoca, Romania was founded in 1920 by Alexandru Borza.
The garden spreads over 14 hectares of hilly land, which seems to favor successfully the growth of extremely diverse types of plants, coming from every corner of the world. The plant collections account for around 10,000 distinctive groups. The area is divided into several sections based on the special type of the plants: ornamental, phytogeographic, systematic, economic and medicinal. The Romanian flora is well represented by the vegetation characteristic to the Transylvanian Plain, to the Carpathian Mountains, to the regions of Banat and Oltenia, to the seaside dunes, etc.
One of the main attractions here is the Roman Garden, dominated by the statue of the goddess Ceres and by several archeological artifacts dating from the Roman age of the Napoca city. This section is meant to depict an ancient Roman garden with vegetables and flowers that were then cultivated and which are still to be found in our peasant gardens nowadays. The Japanese Garden is a garden in Japanese style, with a brook and a Japanese-style house.
It is one of the oldest and biggest Ethnographic Museums of Romania, founded in 1922. It has been hosted since 1959 by Reduta Palace, a historical monument where the process of the so-called "memorandists" took place (1889-1895). It is a national museum with over 65,000 pieces telling about the culture of the Romanian folk (occupations of the inhabitants of Transylvania, ceramics, textiles, folk costumes, traditional objects, housing and food).
The Ethnographic open air section "Romulus Vuia" is the first open air museum from Romania and the sixth from Europe. Founded in 1929 by the greatest Romanian ethnographer, Romulus Vuia, it exhibits Transylvanian popular architecture, peasants' technical equipments, handicraft workshops, ethno-botanical and ethno-zoological areas. It hosts annual fairs and traditional cultural events.
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