Union Hall in Romania’s Alba Iulia closes for refurbishment

The Union Hall, the building where the union of Transylvania with the Romanian Kingdom was decided, will be refurbished in preparation for the Great Union celebration of 2018. The Union Hall is located in Alba Iulia, in central Romania. The building will close at the end of October, beginning of November 2017 and will re-open on December 1 of next year, when Romania is celebrating a century since the Great Union, Dan Popescu, the public administrator of the Alba county, said, quoted by Agerpres. The refurbishment is undertaken with a RON 10 million (EUR 2.19 million) budget, partly allocated by the Romanian Government two years ago. Some RON 9.9 million (EUR 2.18 million) came from the state budget, and RON 229,041 (EUR 50,228) from the Alba County Council. The local authorities were hoping to start the work in the spring of this year but the delay in getting various permits postponed it. Ion Dumitrel, the president of the Alba County Council, said the Culture Minister “took about nine months” to release a permit for the archaeological digging, which is not justified in this case. The building is in need of repairing work to its roof, of works to eliminate infiltration, of replacing the woodwork and a redoing of the interior. The original work of French painter Pierre Bellet will also be restored. At the Union Hall, 1,228 delegates decided on December 1 1918 the union of Transylvania with Romania. The Hall also hosted the coronation of King Ferdinand and Queen Maria as royalty of a united Romania in 1922 and the festivities of the Union in 1929. The building was erected between 1898 and 1900, and initially functioned as a casino for the military of the Austro-Hungarian army stationed in the Alba Iulia garrison. It hosts a permanent exhibition related to the 1918 event. Alba-Iulia should also see the construction of the Union Monument, also in preparation for the 100-year anniversary of the historical 1918 moment. MP Florin Roman was in a three-hour hunger strike to protest that the Government hadn’t allocated money for the construction of the monument. Travel planner: Re-discovering Alba Iulia, the Romanian city where history comes to life editor@romania-insider.com