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Târgu Mures |
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TÂRGU MURES is still at heart Marosvásárhely , one of the great
Magyar cities of Transylvania, although the Magyar influence has been
diluted by recent Romanian and Gypsy immigration. The city was briefly
notorious as a centre of ethnic tension, with riots in March 1990,
largely stirred up by the right-wing extremists of the Vatra with
government connivance, in which at least three died, and the desecration
of Jewish graves in May of the same year. It is more reputably known as
a centre of learning - its university is small, but both the medical and
drama schools are renowned nationally; under Communism both of these
formerly Hungarian establishments ended up teaching entirely in Romanian
and consequently admitting only Romanian students, but today the
Hungarian language has equal status once more. The city suffers from
heavy pollution generated at the Azomures chemical plant by the main
road and rail line to the southwest of town - it's liable to be an
unpleasant experience entering or leaving town along this route.
The Town
It's a twenty-minute walk north from the bus station to the city centre
(bus #2, #4, #16, #17, #18 or #22, or maxitaxis ) - turn right along
Strada Gheorghe Doja, past the train station, and on to Piata Victoriei
and Piata Trandafirilor , the city's focal point. These squares are
lined with fine Secession-style edifices, of which the most grandiose
are the adjacent prefecture and Palace of Culture. These fantastic
buildings both date from 1913 and are typical of an era when a self-consciously
"Hungarian" style of architecture reflected Budapest's policy of
Magyarizing Transylvania.
The prefecture's rooftops blaze with polychromatic tiling, while the
most stunning features of the Palace of Culture (Tues-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat &
Sun 9am-1pm) are its internal decorations, including 50kg of gilding -
the caretaker should be able to show you around. The most spectacular
room in the palace is the Hall of Mirrors ( Sala de Oglinzi ), with
stained-glass windows illustrating local myths and a fine organ;
concerts are often held here. Another hall, with special lotus-shaped
chairs, is used for weddings. On the ground floor a gallery houses shows
by local artists, while upstairs the County History and Art Museums (same
hours) emphasize the town's links with Moldavia, Michael the Brave and
anti-Hapsburg fighters such as Avram Iancu. Among the portraits held in
the museum, look out for the careworn face of György Dózsa (Gheorghe
Doja in Romanian), a local Székely mercenary in Archbishop Bákocz's
crusade, who thrust himself to the forefront in 1514 when the peasants'
crusade became a radical anti-feudal uprising. János Zápolyai arranged a
particularly ghastly execution at Timisoara for Dózsa and his followers.
The museum's natural sciences section , largely dioramas of stuffed
beasts, is northwest of the Palace of Culture at Str. Horea 24 (Tues-Fri
9am-4pm, Sat 9am-2pm, Sun 9am-1pm). Heading along here from Piata
Trandafirilor you'll pass the city's synagogue - all rose windows and
domes - where Strada Horea crosses Strada Aurel Filimon. The museum's
colourful ethnographic section (Tues-Fri 9am-4pm, Sat 9am-2pm, Sun
9am-1pm) is two blocks north of the Palace of Culture at Piata
Trandafirilor 11 in the Toldalagy House, a fine Baroque pile built in
1759-62. Beside it, at the entrance to the modern plaza of Piata
Teatrului, stands a tower raised in 1735, all that remains of the
Minorite (Franciscan) monastery.
The neo-Byzantine Orthodox Cathedral (1925-34) marks the northern end of
Piata Trandafirilor. It was the Romanians' riposte to the imperialistic
Magyar administrative buildings, which dominate the southern end of the
square, pushing aside the more modest Baroque church of the Jesuits on
its east side; for good measure they followed up with a statue of Avram
Iancu, on the cathedral's southern side.
Just northeast of the cathedral is Piata Petofi, then Piata Bernardy
György, dominated by the walls of the citadel , inside which shelters
the Calvinist church, built for the Dominicans in 1430 and later used by
the Transylvanian Diet. Two blocks east of the citadel, along Bulevardul
Antonescu, Strada Saguna heads north to the wooden church of Sf Mihail
(1793-94). The church has a beautifully decorated interior, and a
virtual shrine to the national poet, Eminescu, who slept in the porch in
1866 because there was no room at the inn.
Despite its long-standing role as a garrison town, Târgu Mures also
takes pride in its intellectual tradition; the mathematicians Farkas
Bolyai (1775-1856) and his son János (1802-60), founders of non-Euclidean
geometry, receive their due in the Bolyai Memorial Museum at Str. Bolyai
17 (Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-1pm), east from Piata
Trandafirilor. The museum also houses a hundred paintings by the Székely
artist Nagy Imre as well as Târgu Mures's greatest treasures, the Teleki
and Bolyai libraries . The Teleki collection, consisting of 40,000
volumes, was built up by Count Samuel Teleki, Chancellor of Transylvania,
in the eighteenth century, and with the later addition of the Bolyai
collection, it now includes many ancient medical and scientific texts as
well as the works of the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. It
was opened to the public in 1802, since when another 80,000 volumes have
been added.
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