Culture Palace

Top choice


This ornate secessionist-style building, ostentatiously tiled on the outside and colourfully furnished within, is unlike anything else in Transylvania. Built 1911–13, the Culture Palace harbours busts and glass portraits of composers, glinting chandeliers, Carrara marble stairways, mirrors imported from Venice, a regally decorated concert hall, and display rooms on local history and art (all included in the entry price). The undisputed highlight is the Hall of Mirrors (Sala Oglinzi), where Székely village life and dark fairy-tales are immortalised in stained glass.

The windows in the 45m-long Hall of Mirrors feature cautionary tales, odes to maternal love, and women being ravaged by the Devil, all captured in colourful stained glass. Elsewhere, a small museum of regional history is within the Dandea Hall, while the Secession Hall exhibits medals, costumes and large late-19th-century and early-20th-century paintings. Peep inside the Concert Hall to see ox-blood velvet seats and a ceiling dripping with gold decoration.


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