Pharmacy Museum, Cluj-Napoca

The Pharmacy Museum is housed in the Hintz House, at 28 Unirii Square (corner of Regele Ferdinand Street), in the historic centre of Cluj. It is a branch of the National Museum of Transylvanian History (MNIT), which shows its History of Pharmacy Collection here under the long-established name of Pharmacy Museum. The building housed the first public pharmacy in Cluj, opened around 1550 and recorded in the 16th century. At first the pharmacy was public, under the control of the town council; it was privatised in the 18th century, when its best-known owner was Tobias Mauksch (1752-1802), the city's privileged pharmacist. In the 19th century it passed to the Hintz family, who owned it until nationalisation in 1949. The pharmacy worked for centuries in the same place. The collection began with the donation of Transylvanian pharmacy objects by Professor Iuliu Orient (1869-1940), shown in 1904 at the Transylvanian Museum. Professor Bologa founded the Pharmacy Museum in this old pharmacy in 1954. After renovation and extension, the museum reopened on 15 January 2024. Visitors walk through the officina, the room where medicines were sold, with its 18th-century painted wall decoration, the camera materialis, the laboratory and other rooms of a traditional pharmacy. The collection includes pharmacy jars, glassware and laboratory equipment, books and documents, old remedies (materia medica) and medical instruments, with objects from all over Transylvania dating from the 16th to the 20th century. There is a free virtual guide and leaflets in several languages. The Hintz House is a historic monument, code CJ-II-m-B-07495, and lies within the urban ensemble "Historic centre of Cluj" (CJ-II-a-A-07244). The museum is run by the National Museum of Transylvanian History. Did you know that during the restoration of the Hintz House the building revealed its historical layers, from Roman ruins and medieval foundations to 18th-century wall paintings? The research also led to the extension of the cellar, the oldest part of the building.