Queen Mary Park (former Coronini Park), Splaiul Nistrului, Nr. 2
Queen Mary Park is the oldest park in Timisoara, originally called Coronini Park, in honor of Count Johann von Coronini-Cronberg, governor of Serbian Vojvodina and Banat Timisoara, who around 1850 ordered the arrangement of the park in English style.
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Queen Mary Park is the oldest park in Timișoara, with an area of 45,100 m², located on the former Esplanade, the plain "non aedificandi", on which there was a ban on building outside the city walls.
It was originally named Coronini Park, in honor of Count Johann von Coronini-Cronberg, governor of Serbian Vojvodina and Banat of Timiș, who around 1850 ordered the planting of trees (oaks, yew, pines), arranging the park in the English-style for walks on alleys and wooden pavilions for orchestra music. It was known as Stadtpark in German and Városliget in Hungarian, during Socialist Romania - Youth Park, later People's Park.
In 2011 the restoration and consolidation works started, being placed in the center of the park a bust portrait of Queen Mary, made by the sculptor Aurel Gheorghe Ardeleanu in 2009, the park being called Queen Mary Park since 1919, in memory of the queen with an important role in the achievement of the Great Union of 1918.
The entrance to the park is marked by a Secession-style monumental gate, erected in 1910. The architectural elements of the park (monumental gate, enclosure wall) are solved in a plastic language that is relatively uniform with the built fronts of the buildings in the 3rd August 1919 avenue, which belong to the style of the 1900 years, with two exceptions: Haymann and Miksa (Max) Steiner palaces, in historical eclectic style .
The Apollo cinema building was erected in the park, later called Cinema Parc, today the headquarters of a private ophthalmology clinic. The former Apollo cinema was built in 1909 by architect Josef Kremmer junior and rebuilt in 1955 by architect Paul von Schuster.
Bibliography:
Mihai Opriș, Mihai Botescu, Historical Architecture from Timișoara, Tempus Publishing House, Timișoara, 2014
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Queen Mary Park (former Coronini Park)
(...) However, since 1919, my family lived in Timişoara on the third floor of a building that was then called "Hungaria Bad". In reality, it had a public steam room.
Across the street was the "Regina Maria" park, which I used to call the "small park" to distinguish it from the "big park" behind the bridge on the Bega, from the center. I spent most of my childhood in the small park with my younger brother Ernö. Our games were the same as the other children's games (horse, hide and seek, tag, etc.). Today the children play differently: with bicycles, roller skates… From the park, a small pedestrian bridge, over an arm of Bega, led to the primary school from the "Școala Normală". It was a school for teacher training. Not far from the school was the orphanage. The children who were brought there went to the same school. We boys were also students at the "Școala Normală".
Géza Kornis, born in 1916 in Timișoara - excerpt from Memoria salvată, Volume II, coordinators Smaranda Vultur and Adrian Onică, West University of Timișoara Publishing House, 2009.
I have memories from the age of three or four, when I lived on 3 August Street, number 1, near Neptune Baths. I remember walking with my mother in the park under some big trees and there was a big box of sand there and my happiness was playing in the sand. I vaguely remember a house, I know I had a balcony and from that balcony I watched the milkman come with a cart pulled by a horse, he was very neatly dressed. Hand over the goods to the subscribers... I was screaming from the balcony to the horse ...
Stela Simon, born in 1938 in Timișoara - excerpt from the interview conducted by Mihaela Sitariu in Timișoara in 2004, The oral history and anthropology group archive, coordinated by Smaranda Vultur.
When I was little… I was a servant from the age of 14, imagine… Well there I was like a child. The first time I was a babysitter at Deutsch Zoltán. There I washed the dishes, played at home with the baby, and went to the park. This park used to be so beautiful!
Which one?
This where the Apollo cinema is, in front of the Neptune Baths is that park. I used to go there all the time. There was military music in the afternoon.
Sunday?
During the week, in the evening. Before, people would go, not only me with the child or other servants with the child, but others would also go, sit down and… There was military music. They sang and we listened. The children were playing, and us, with the rest of the girls, we were talking.
Anna Schneider, born in 1917, Őtvös / Otveşti - excerpt from the interview conducted by Antonia Komlosi in 2003 in Timişoara, The oral history and anthropology group archive, coordinated by Smaranda Vultur.
Among memories
by Zara Chișevescu, 10th grade
"Nikolaus Lenau" Theoretical High School in Timișoara
Think you know your city? Can you say you know yourself if you don't know your city? I know, it's strange to ask you this, but what is Timisoara to you? The baroque-style buildings in the Union Square, the coffees on every corner or the 33 bus always full?
To be honest, I have no idea what Timisoara is. It's just a city. Or not...?
I've been seeing the city differently for some time. When I talk to old people in pharmacies, when I stop to look at the waitresses in the cafés or the drivers in the traffic, I am shown something that seems like a memory, but which does not belong to me. They are not my memories, but they are so colorful and real that I seem to be living them. These short flashes last no more than five seconds. Although they don't belong to me, they have one thing in common. They are about Timisoara. I ignore them. Why should I care? Maybe I'm hallucinating from my insomnia. I've suffered from insomnia since I was a child; hallucinations can occur over time.
I went out one night with friends to the Timis Cinema. I didn't really want to go. The movie was so boring, I fell asleep. I only remember my friends waking me up. The awakening was so brutal, as if they had pulled me out of the ocean of dreams and if I slept another minute, I would drown in my own sleep. I didn't fall asleep at home. I had a headache all night. As usual, only the light from my apartment flickered between the blocks of Mărăști. Questions started running through my head. The most persistent, this one: If I'm an insomniac, how did I fall asleep so easily at the movies? It never happened to me and I couldn't explain it. Strange. Eventually I was going to ignore the unexpected movie theater sleep like everything else going on around me: insomnia, brief hallucinations, my job as a barista. However, it was the next day's event that startled me.
It was Thursday and I was on my way to work. I work at a coffee shop near Liberty Square. You see the paradox, right? I, an insomniac, am paid to sell people just coffee, the antidote to staying awake. I stopped at the pharmacy in Union Square to get my medication. I was standing in line and accidentally bumped into an older lady waiting in front of me. For a split second I saw only blackness before my eyes, and then I woke up again in a hallucination. "It's only five seconds," I said to myself. I was not in an ordinary landscape, nor in a situation that I usually "experienced": I was on the cathedral stairs. In front of me ran wounded people, some dirty, some with flags with holes in their hands. Only then did I realize that next to me, lying on the stairs, was the lady from the pharmacy. She looked much younger and was sobbing. She was holding in her arms a man whose body was dripping blood like from a barrel of wine. It was an extremely sad picture. All the chaos around me frightened me, the chanting for freedom moved me, and the whole image made me cry. I woke up. The lady in front of me had taken her high blood pressure medication and now I was next. The hallucination about the Revolution seemed to have lasted more than five seconds and it affected me very much.
When I arrived at the café, my colleague was already serving our favorite customer. We have a great coffee man who comes in every morning at two minutes past ten to get a Doppio. We don't know anything about him, but by the way he dresses, we both think he's some corporate guy in a big building in 700 Square. We greeted him and when our eyes met, I felt a slight dizziness and watched as the coffee shop got blurrier and blurrier. "Another hallucination," I thought.
I shook my head and saw him. The corporatist was extremely young, probably around 30. I was in the Fabric and was unconsciously walking with his friends towards the Brewery. An old yellow streetcar passed us and they all started humming, "Hey streetcar, double-decker and pulled by horses". I hadn't heard Phoenix since I was a kid. It was probably the '60s, '70s. Something I didn't understand. The 30-year-old man next to me couldn't have been the corporate guy in my coffee shop. He'd be too old today. In whose memory was I? Where is the corporate guy who "brought" me here? I looked around and suddenly noticed a little boy, being carried on the back by one of my friends. How small and expensive the corporatist was! He had on a cute little overalls and he was trying to sing with them too, though he couldn't speak yet. Once I walked through the Brewery door with them and stepped onto the wooden floor, which looked to be the same as it is today, I found myself in the modern-day coffee shop. The corporatist greeted me and left with the Doppio.
I felt dizzy and nauseous. The hallucinations made me tired. Throughout the day I experienced too many memories. I saw a former employee at Guban, when the factory was not a ruin, I was in the Brück House, because I had touched a very distant niece of Salamon Brück. I visited the Stephania Palace when there was still the "Beer Chariot" on the ground floor. I admired the former facade of the Opera, with its statues hidden in cement today. I experienced thousands of memories of the people of Timișoara and Timișoara itself.
I never thought he'd been through so much. My city had too many stories. I came home at night, got into the wooden elevator with sliding doors and held the elevator doors open. I did that when I was bored, to get some action at night. At least I could yell for help and deal with the fire department, instead of lying on my bed thinking about all the bad decisions I made.
Suddenly, I felt the elevator spinning and I lost my balance. I felt dizzy and saw black dots everywhere. "If I take my hands away from the doors, I'm stuck here", I kept saying to myself and trying to hold them as tightly as I could to the pieces of plastic. The dizziness had taken over my whole body and I felt all the strength in my muscles disappear. Naturally, I let my hands free, because I couldn't control myself any longer, and I slid slowly down, closing my eyes. Images appeared to me in a chaotic order. I saw everything. The whole history of Timișoara. The Turks. Florimund Mercy. The minorities. Laszlo Szekely. The Bastion. Polytechnic and Western University. The Lawn. Mercury Palace. The Dome. Decebal Bridge. Kandia Factory. Cathedral.
He ran out of air. I was slightly shaken. The elevator had jammed, just as I expected.
The hallucination, or rather hallucinations in the elevator apparently lasted for a full hour. I woke up in the hospital, and sitting next to me in a chair was my sister. My sister lives in Bucharest, but happened to be here now. The doctors must have called her, as she was the only living member of the family. Besides me, of course.
He looked up from the phone and smiled at me.
- Turns out the meds you were taking stopped working. I went to take the ones your doctor prescribed, he explained.
After a few days I got out of the hospital. I was getting better. The insomnia was slowly disappearing and I had no hallucinations since that evening.
I walked with my sister through Traian Square before she left the East Train Station. I passed by buildings, parks, statues and remembered all the people whose memories of Timisoara I had visited. Everywhere I looked, I saw a memory. Some of a girl, some of an old man. We crossed the Decebal Bridge and entered Regina Maria Park. Our family lived in Fabric. I felt a little dizzy again and was ready to lean against my sister, but I sat down on a white bench, closed my eyes and tried to calm down. Only one image came to me. I was still in Queen Mary Park and I'd see my dad teaching me how to ride a bike. I was little and I had a blue helmet. My dad was smiling, but he was stressed. He didn't want me to fall. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath.
Finally, I had "lived" a memory of my own in Timișoara. Timisoara finally belonged to me.
–
House with ivy
A memory related to an absolutely magnificent building in Timisoara is from 2 years ago when
I was walking with my sister on the Bega river bank and I saw a little cat that led us to a house on
that I hadn't noticed before. It was late and quite dark, but I remained fascinated by
the beauty and energy that the house conveyed and the first impulse was that I wanted to enter the
inside to explore it. I understood that the kitten was "of the house", that's why she led us to her, we
played with it a bit and the next day I went to see the house on the light. I still haven't managed to visit it in
inside, I've only seen some pictures, but it's on my wish list this year
Sima Larisa, Student UPT, 2023
