In 1888, the construction of the Museum Palace was completed, a building made according to a project by the architect Jakob Klein (1855-1928), in the style of the German Renaissance. Since 1953, the Library of the Romanian Academy, Timișoara Branch, has been operating in this building.
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At the initiative of the great man of culture Ormós Zsigmond, prefect of Timiş County and a group of intellectuals, on July 25, 1872, the first scientific society in Banat (Southern Hungary) was established, called the Society of History and Archeology, which aimed to establish a historical-archeological museum in Timişoara. The year of the Society’s establishment is also considered the foundation year of the Timișoara museum, a precursor of the National Museum of Banat in Timișoara.
In the absence of adequate space, ever since 1876, the museum's patrimony has been preserved in two rooms in the Wellauer House, on Lonovics Street (now Augustin Pacha Street). The official opening of the Society's museum for the visiting public took place on May 24, 1877.
Given that the Wellauer House, the museum's headquarters at the time, was in an advanced state of disrepair, the county authorities decided to demolish the building and build new headquarters, and during this time the museum's heritage was housed in the Prefecture building.
In 1888, the construction of the Museum Palace was completed, a building made according to a project by the architect Jakob Klein (1855-1928), in the style of the German Renaissance.
The building of the museum palace proved from the very beginning to be too small to house the museum's collections, and in these circumstances the decision was taken to move the museum to the Cultural Palace (in the wing facing Alba-Iulia Street), a move that began in the autumn of 1937.
In 1941, the building of the Museum Palace received a new destination, becoming the headquarters of the Communal Library.
Since 1953, the Library of the Romanian Academy, Timișoara Branch, has been operating in this building.
Bibliography:
- Florin Medeleț, Nicoleta Toma, Banat Museum. File de cronică 1872-1918, I, Timișoara, Mirton Publishing House, 1997.
- Florin Medeleț, Vasile Rămneanțu, Banat Museum. File de cronică 1918-1948, II, Timișoara, Mirton Publishing House, 2003.
Romanian Academy Library, Timisoara Branch
Listen to the audio version.
Robert Șerban
to read books from the Academy Library
you have to be a very strong person
no
I’m not talking about intellectual strength
but I look at the huge new gate
of the library
and I notice that for almost two hours
no one has opened it
almost no one
June 2022
“Mrs. Rațiu lived in one of the houses owned by the professors at Politehnica University, a small group of houses around the bushes, at the end of the football stadium. I was trying to grasp, in the whole neighborhood - quiet, without any shops, the now lost status of the university professor before the war. It was probably fiction, but maybe fiction with a grain of truth, as was today when, on Loga Street and on the alley leading off to the park, one would think, while passing by the houses where old storyman and Ș.F. live, about the mystery of literary, scholarly being.” (Livius Ciocârlie, The Sunken Bell, Cartea Românească Publishing House, 1988, p. 291)
