Baroque Palace

In 1716, after the victory over the Turks at Petrovaradin (today’s Novi-Sad), Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), one of the brilliant military commanders of the House of Habsburg, decided to conquer Timișoara and the neighboring region, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire for 164 years. The decision was motivated by the strategic position of the city, which had been proven during military conflicts in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1718, under the peace treaty of Passarowitz (today a town in Serbia), Timișoara and most of Banat came under the Habsburg House. Emperor Charles VI signed the decree establishing the Banat Administration, making Timișoara the capital of one of the new imperial provinces. Until 1751 the administrative structures were military and the governors had a dual function: military and civilian. The first commanding general and governor of the Banat Administration was Claudius Florimond Count Mercy d’Argenteau, also known as Count Mercy (1716-1734). In the period from 1751-1778, the city had a civilian administration. The first civil president of the Banat Administration was Don Francesco de Paula Ramon, Count Vilana Perlas, Marquis of Perlas, also known as Count of Vilana Perlas (1753-1768). Compared to the period when the city was under Ottoman rule (1552 – 1716), the House of Habsburg imposed a more rigorously planned urban design, with a rectangular street network in which the city’s representative squares were built. Throughout the 18th century, buildings were designed and constructed around them. It was the time when Timișoara defined its personality through architecture in the Central European Baroque style. Among the characteristics of the Baroque buildings of Timișoara is the spatial hierarchy of the buildings: the ground floor occupied by administrative or commercial spaces; the living area facing the street; vaulted corridors for access to the annexes in the inner courtyards. The buildings have a ground or first floor, a balanced silhouette, composed of symmetrical facades, structured vertically and horizontally by pilasters, pilasters, or cornices. The Old Prefect’s Palace in Timișoara, later known as the Baroque Palace, is also subject to these architectural rigors. Like other 18th-century buildings, it was part of the building modernization program developed in the regions newly incorporated by the House of Habsburg. It symbolized imperial power. Until after World War II, the Baroque Palace housed the administrative headquarters on the ground floor and the residences of the civil servants on the first and first floors. In its almost 300 years of existence, the Baroque Palace changed its name several times, depending on the prevailing policies and the administrative reorganization of the city. It was built in stages, once the Main Square, the Dome Square, today the Union Square. This gave the city its configuration in the 18th century.

Although it was not until 1751 that the chamber administration was separated from the military one and the civil president of Banat was established, already in 1730-1740 the Austrian military engineers proposed the construction of a residence belonging to the civil governor, a residence that had to be designed in relation to the market. During the same period, the sites of the Roman-Catholic Dom (built in 1736-1772), the Orthodox Episcopal Church (built in 1744-1748) and the Holy Trinity monument (built in 1740) were also determined. The south side of the square was chosen for the President’s Palace, on which, in 1733 – 1735, stood the building of the Mining Office and, next to it, the Military Cashier’s Office. The construction of the Baroque Palace was started from these two buildings, which were joined by a superstructure. At the beginning, the rooms facing the Dome Square were of less importance because the land on which the square was built was marshy, bearing the traces of the branches of the Bega canal. The main access was through a portal with a mascarón, located on the west side of the building, which is preserved today as a window. In 1752, the Old Chamber House, named after its function during the mixed German-Serbian administration of the city, was a two-storey building with a ground floor. At the back, towards the courtyard, it had several stables and storerooms as annexes. The ground floor had belonged to the Banat Chancellery Administration and the Military Cashier’s Office. In 1754, the Old Chamber House was fitted out as the residence of the first president of the civil administration, Count de Vilana Perlas, known for a time as the President’s House/Palace. He was accommodated in the rooms on the upper floors, the ground floor being used for the chancellery and dispatch services. The side of the building facing the square was extended and a portal was built, which has survived to this day. Its composition includes a basket-handle arch, highlighted by a simple-profile crowning and a classical wreath inspired by the imperial baroque. The facade of the Palace is sumptuously decorated in Baroque style, alternating between two types of interlacing on the pilasters, parapets and window copings. In 1774, the President’s House was enlarged by mirroring the existing body of the building, thus acquiring a second interior courtyard, which was accessed via a vaulted passageway. On the facade, the lavish decoration from the initial phase of construction was simplified by the use of a single plant motif, but applied to the pilasters. In 1778, when Vienna decided to reorganize the region by placing it under the coordination of the Administrative Council of Hungary, with the old districts becoming counties, the Baroque palace continued to play its role as the County House. This was to be the seat of the sub-prefect, the county officials and the prison for civil offenses, while the old wing on the ground floor housed the Chamber of Accounts. Between 1849-1861 in the newly established autonomous region of Serbian Vojvodina and Timișan Banat, the Baroque Palace became the seat of the administration, which in that decade was directly subordinated to Vienna. With the exception of some repair work and painting in gray in 1858, the building was not extensively altered.

At the end of the 19th century, the Baroque palace underwent a transformation to its present form. It was modified in accordance with the taste of the time, which meant that any intervention on a building had to be done by renovating it and finding a style representative of contemporary architecture. Hence the ignoring of Baroque legacies. The 18th-century style, known as the “banal Zopf style”, was considered obsolete. Therefore, a restoration was proposed through so-called “stylistic purification”. It was carried out in 1885-1886 by Jakob-Jacques Klein (1855-1928), an architect and builder from Chernivtsi. The building separating the two inner courtyards was demolished. The roof facing the square was attic-roofed and the rooms were reorganized. Baroque decoration was removed from the façade. The plaster relief decoration has disappeared, and the windows have been given rectangular surrounds with identical crowns. The treatment of the façade attempted, but never completed, a sgraffito decoration was to cover the attic panels and window parapets. With the intention of bringing the image of the Baroque Palace closer to the specific French Neo-Renaissance style, in the spirit in which the architect Jakob Klein conceived the aforementioned intervention, the project included a rich decoration of ironwork, materialized by the two exterior doorframes. They were made in the form of griffins and flank the square corners of the building. After the Second World War, the Baroque Palace housed the Faculty of Agronomy of the Timișoara Polytechnic, which later became the Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine. Begun in 1983, the most recent restoration work on the Baroque Palace resulted in its partial opening in 2006, to be continued by teams of designers and builders coordinated by the Ministry of Culture. Located in the historic center of the city, in a square whose architecture is itself marked by the Baroque style, the Baroque Palace today houses the National Art Museum Timișoara, a reference institution of contemporary cultural life, which houses local, national and universal artistic values and attracts many visitors.