Pop-up exhibition tells stories of Romania’s spa town Băile Herculane

A pop-up exhibition highlights the stories of the local spa resort of Băile Herculane this month. Open from September 15 to 24, the Herculane Stories show is the keystone of the first digital museum dedicated to a tourist resort in Romania.

Hosted by the town’s Casino, the exhibition can be visited for free from 12:00 to 18:00.

Herculane Stories, a cultural initiative of the ESCU Association, is the pioneering project that will document, scan, map and digitize, over the course of a year, the most representative elements of heritage and anthropology in Băile Herculane. Iconic buildings, unique architectural elements, archive images, objects from museum and private collections, and local traditions and stories will wait to be discovered in an immersive virtual museum available soon at Herculanestories.ro.

“The challenge of this digital museum is to build a common memory of the city of Băile Herculane. It is more than just an image archive, we want to bring to light exhibition elements from the most diverse sources […], all arranged thematically, in a circuit of moments, places, feelings, searches, desires, hopes; in short - everything that makes up the core identity of the town of Băile Herculane,” said Andreea Danescu, president of the ESCU Association.

All these thematic galleries present in the virtual museum, but also in the physical exhibition, will take visitors on a journey through the streets of Băile Herculane from the resort’s beginnings to the interwar period and the appearance of mass tourism in the Ceaușescu era.

The central point of the digital museum will be the virtual reconstruction of Villa Elisabeta, an iconic building of the spa town that will become the symbolic home of the future museum.

(Photo source: Asociatia ESCU)