National Museum of Transylvanian History

The National Museum of Transylvanian History (MNIT) is located at 2 Constantin Daicoviciu Street, in central Cluj-Napoca, close to Museum Square. It is the only national-level museum in Cluj-Napoca and holds more than 450,000 items. The museum was officially founded on 1 January 1963 as the History Museum of Cluj, with the academician Constantin Daicoviciu as its first director. It continues the work of two older institutions: the Transylvanian Museum Society (1859) and the Institute of Classical Studies of King Ferdinand I University (1929). The numismatic and antiquities collection of the Transylvanian Museum was kept in several buildings, and from 1913 in the old building on today's Constantin Daicoviciu Street, the present seat. Between 1929 and 1940 the collections grew with finds from the excavations at Costești, Grădiștea de Munte, Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, Cășeiu and Bologa. In 1994 the museum became a museum of national importance and took its current name. Since 15 January 2026 the exhibition "Untold Treasures. The History of Transylvania through Objects", spread over both floors, has traced the region's history from the first human traces in the caves of the Carpathians, through the Neolithic, the Dacian period and Roman rule, the Middle Ages and the modern era, to the threshold of the contemporary world: parts of a mammoth, a Dacian sword, a Roman parade mask, medieval weapons and images of the Revolution in Cluj. The same building houses the Roman Lapidarium, with inscribed and sculpted monuments from Roman Dacia, and the Medieval and Early Modern Lapidarium, one of the largest collections of its kind in the country. Tickets can also be bought online. Since 2026 MNIT has also had a new site, MuTRA (the Historical Gallery of Transylvania), in Florești. MNIT is a museum of national importance. The building on Constantin Daicoviciu Street lies in the historic centre of Cluj, close to Museum Square. Did you know that the Roman Lapidarium holds two votive altars that record the rank of "municipium" granted to Napoca by Emperor Hadrian (117-138) and the rank of "colonia" granted under Marcus Aurelius or Commodus?