Take a picture with a picture! At Brukenthal National Museum.
Sibiu’s “Bruke” is a the largest museum in South-Eastern Europe, and it consists of the Brukenthal Palace, the Museum of Natural History, the History Museum, the Museum of Pharmacy, and the Museum of Hunting . Perhaps the most known of them, and mostly identified as being the Brukenthal Museum is the Brukenthal Palace, which is the former home of baron Samuel von Brukenthal. Brukenthal was Habsburg governor of Transylvania, a baron of the Holy Roman Empire and personal advisor of Empress Maria Theresa. The Palace began housing the baron’s first collections at around 1790. The collections were officially opened to the public in 1817, making the Brukenthal Museum the first of its kind in Romania.
The Art Galleries located inside the Brukenthal Palace include a number of about 1200 works belonging to the main European schools of painting, from the 15th to the 18th century: Flemish-Dutch, German and Austrian, Italian, Spanish and French Schools. The Galleries also include collections of engravings, books, numismatics, and minerals.
The Brukenthal Library is also located inside the Brukenthal Palace. It comprises approximately 300.000 library units (manuscripts, rare foreign books, old Romanian-language books, contemporary books and specialised magazines).
Baron Samuel von Brukenthal’s wish to turn his palace in one of the most important European arts museum came true a few years after his death, in 1817 when the palace opened its gates to the large public for the very first time.
Two centuries later, in 2010, the Brukenthal Museum was awarded the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra.
200 years after it’s inauguration, the three sections of the museum – The European Art Galleries, the Romanian Art Galleries and the Contemporary Art Galleries – exhibit an extremely rich and diverse set of paintings, sculptures, engravings and cartography. Some of the noteworthy artists whose works are exhibited in the museum are: Jan van Eyck, Antonello da Messina, Hans Memling, Lorenzo Lotto, Pieter Bruegel, Franz Neuhauser, Theodor Aman, Nicolae Grigorescu, Ştefan Luchian, Nicolae Tonita, Corneliu Baba and many others.
However, besides its rich collection, the palace – a baroque monument itself – is impressive through its excellently preserved architecture, interior and exterior details and furniture, most of the items being more than two centuries old.
You can visit it Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm for only 12 lei. For groups the price decreases at 8 lei.
And after you visit the Brukenthal Museum, close by you’ll find some perfect spots to sit back and relax. You can choose one of our partner venues, like La Turn, Lilli’s, Tango, Union, Weinkeller, Enzo. Use Travelscounter and you will get a 10% discount in each of these top restaurants. Enjoy!
