The renovated Palace of Culture in Marosvásárhely was handed over (photo gallery)

The renovated Palace of Culture in Marosvásárhely was handed over on Thursday, one of the most important historical buildings in Transylvania, which was completely renewed during the four-year renovation and restoration works.

At the bilingual – Romanian and Hungarian – handover ceremony held in the renewed hall of mirrors of the Art Nouveau palace on the main square of Marosvásárhely, Ferenc Péter, the president of the Maros County Assembly, which maintains the building, said: the handover ceremony is an outstanding event for the county's population.

He recalled the beginning of the works, the pitfalls, and also touched on the fact that as a monument it was impossible to "touch any part of it mindlessly".

    "The Palace of Culture is perfect as it was dreamed up and built for us by mayor György Bernády more than a hundred years ago. All we have to do is to take care of it, and while keeping its centuries-old patina, we carry out interventions on it in accordance with the needs of today's time.

- said the politician of the Romanian Hungarian Democratic Union (RMDSZ).

He thanked those who contributed to the realization of the project and pointed out: "a comprehensive renovation process has been completed, since the modernization of the interior of the palace began during the county presidency of his predecessor, Edit Emőke Lokodi. The renovation of the exhibition spaces is still underway, the work is financed by the county assembly. The work will be completed this year, so the building will be usable as a whole," he promised.

“ We are the inheritors of this amazing building and all that it provides to the community. (.) We are still here to fill it with soulful performances dear to our hearts," said Ferenc Péter, wishing that the building would still be full of life a hundred years from now.

Bulcsú Ötvös Koppány, the director of the Maros County Museum, pointed out in his speech: the palace has been serving cultural purposes for 111 years, and the last time it was probably inaugurated was in the same splendor as it is now. The Viennese newspapers also praised the beauty of Marosvásárhely's "brand name", while art historians consider it an outstanding work of the Central European Art Nouveau, he reminded.

"However, the Palace of Culture is not only an architectural masterpiece with an extremely complex iconographic program and a set of symbols, a carrier of industrial and fine arts values, but also an institution, or more precisely, a group of institutions," he said. He underlined that

the building's original functions have mostly been preserved, it still houses a museum, library and philharmonic hall.

The building will also be opened to the public on Thursday evening with a concert by the Marosvásárhely State Philharmonic.

The building's main facades, exterior doors and windows, the electrical equipment of the main entrance, and the fence of the county library's courtyard were renovated. The roof structure was also repaired, the damaged tiles, cone tiles and top decorations were replaced with the same ceramic elements manufactured by the Zsolnay company in Pécs. The metal decorative elements and inscriptions on the facade, the external stone elements and mosaics were restored.

In the hall of mirrors, which is considered the most spectacular part of the palace, the interior coverings were renovated, the original decoration of the walls, columns and ceiling were restored, and the canvases, lamps, wainscoting and parquet were renovated. Internal repairs were carried out in the stairwell of the county library, while the organ was repaired in the concert hall.

The facade of the three-storey palace, built between 1911 and 1913 based on the designs of Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab, is decorated with Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch's mosaic entitled The Apotheosis of Hungarian Culture. The bronze reliefs above the four entrance doors depict Ferenc Liszt, the legend of St. Elizabeth, the two Bolyas, the writer György Aranka and the founding of the first Linguistic Society, as well as one of the images from Ferenc Erkel's opera Bánk bán.

The building also has a concert hall, exhibition spaces and several representative rooms. The most beautiful is the mirror room, decorated with 12 colored glass windows, which capture the characteristic images of Székely folklore and folk ballads.

MTI

Cover photo: The renovated Palace of Culture in Marosvásárhely on the day of its handover, February 29, 2024.
MTI/Gábor Kiss