Museums, monuments in eastern Romania city to be refurbished with EU funds

Seven museums in Iași, a city in northeastern Romania, will be refurbished with over RON 81 million (EUR 17 million) worth of EU funds, Rfi.ro reported. The projects are rolled out by both the City Hall and the County Council.

The City Hall is in charge with the refurbishment of Braunstein Palace (pictured), Frumoasa Monastery, the Turkish Bath, set to become a Center for Contemporary Art, and the Nature History Museum, all worth over EUR 22 million. The City Hall is also dealing with the refurbishment of the Berthelot House, together with the Culture Ministry, and that of the Kogălniceanu School and of the Roznovanu Palace, from its own funds.

The Braunstein Palace is refurbished under a project amounting to RON 14 million (EUR 2.9 million). The palace is one of the few landmarks still standing of the city’s old Unirii Square. In time, the palace hosted a hotel, a bank, and was the HQ of a political party. After being nationalized, it was turned into a store, while the apartments on the upper levels served as social housing.

The project concerning Frumoasa Monastery amounts to RON 21 million (EUR 4.4 million) and it is aimed and refurbishing and promoting the site’s tourist and cultural potential. That of the Center for Contemporary Art, to be hosted in the former building of the Communal Baths (Turkish Bath) amounts to RON 21.8 million (EUR 4.5 million). The refurbishment of the Natural History Museum amounts to RON 13.3 million (some EUR 2.9 million).

The County Council will deal with the refurbishment of several memorial houses that belonged to 19th Romanian writers, among them the house of author Ion Creangă (Bojdeuca Ion Creangă), and former residences of poet Vasile Alecsandri and of novelist and playwright Constantin Negruzzi.

Meanwhile, the Dosoftei House is also undergoing RON 1.8 million (EUR 378,151) restoration works. Dating back to the 18th century, the house takes its name after Moldavian Metropolitan Dosoftei and used to host a printing press where important religious works were printed.

Other museums in Iași that are set to undergo restoration are the Pogor Museum, located in a 19th century house that used to host many of the meetings of the Junimea literary society and the Nicolae Gane Memorial House. The Pogor Museum will be refurbished under a RON 6.5 million project (EUR 1.3 million).

Another RON 16.5 million (EUR 3.4 million) will go towards the refurbishment of the city’s former Police Commissariat (Chestură), which is set to accommodate several museums. A part of the building would accommodate a Pogrom Museum, in memory of Jews killed during the 1941 Iași pogrom,