Ornament that does not stop
Carved plants flowing around the windows without geometric limits.
Chainwit. — CC BY 4.0 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 19986: Adományozó/Donor: Cholnoky Tamás. — Public domain · Norbert Csaba — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Chainwit. — CC BY 4.0
An early twentieth-century town palace on Horea street in Cluj-Napoca, regarded as the best-known Secession building in the city. What distinguishes it is its facade: carved plant ornament spreading around the windows in a continuous flow that does not stop at geometric boundaries, balconies of wrought iron in curving lines, and an undulating crown breaking the horizontal line of the roof. All of this is a conscious refusal of the classical architecture that immediately preceded it. The palace was built as an investment building: luxury flats above and shops below, the model on which central European cities built their streets in that period. The owner was a wealthy lawyer, and it was the rising professional class that financed this architectural wave. The palace stands near a bridge over the Someșul Mic river in an area holding several buildings of the same period. It is a private building and is not visited — the facade from the street is the point.
Carved plants flowing around the windows without geometric limits.
Deliberately breaking the roof's horizontal line.
Luxury flats above, shops below — the central European model.
Horea street, Cluj-Napoca
Because the word palat in Romanian and palota in Hungarian were used in that period for any large, luxurious urban building, not only royal palaces. The big investment buildings put up by bankers, lawyers and companies carried the name to signal status. This is why Cluj, Budapest and Bucharest each hold dozens of palaces that are in reality apartment blocks or company headquarters.
The Someșul Mic crosses the city and its banks have been turned into a promenade and cycle paths, a good place to walk in the evening. On the southern bank is Cluj's central park with its small lake and rowing boats, holding a historic casino building converted into a cultural centre. It is minutes from Horea street.
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