Palace of Culture, Târgu Mureș

The Palace of Culture stands at no. 1 Piața Victoriei, at the south-western end of Piața Trandafirilor, in the centre of Târgu Mureș, next to the former town hall (now the Prefecture), a building designed by the same architectural office. It is a class A historic monument (LMI code MS-II-m-A-15503). The idea of a house of culture arose in 1907, and Mayor György Bernády persuaded the town council to approve the project. The building was designed by the Budapest architects Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab and completed in 1913. The iconographic programme and the interior and exterior decoration were mostly the work of members of the Gödöllő artists' colony, among them Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch, Sándor Nagy and Ferenc Sidló. The façade is dominated by Körösfői-Kriesch's allegorical mosaic, showing figures of the town paying homage to Hungaria, and above the entrance are bronze compositions by Ede Kallós, with scenes from the work of Franz Liszt, Farkas and János Bolyai, and figures from Ferenc Erkel's opera "Bánk bán". The 45 m entrance hall is clad in Carrara marble and closed at both ends by Venetian mirrors. The Great Hall, the concert hall, seats 600, and above its stage is the Rieger organ inaugurated in 1913. On the first floor, the Hall of Mirrors has 12 stained-glass windows with scenes from Szekler folk ballads, made in 1913 in the workshop of Miksa Róth to designs by Ede Toroczkai Wigand and Sándor Nagy. The Small Hall on the second floor has stained glass showing the princes Gabriel Bethlen and Francis II Rákóczi. The building houses the Târgu Mureș State Philharmonic, founded in 1950, the Mureș County Library and the Art Section of the Mureș County Museum, with the Gallery of Modern Romanian Art, the Gallery of Classical Hungarian Art and the Ion Vlasiu Gallery. The visitor route includes the main halls, the foyer and staircase and the Secession Hall, devoted to the town in the early twentieth century; the Bernády and Dandea memorial rooms were temporarily closed at the time of checking. The palace is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays.