TIMISOARA - AN ARHITECTURAL HISTORY
The oldest buildings of the present historical center of Timisoara
were built at the beginning of the 18th Century, which is why it is
often known only as a Baroque city. The town itself is much older but,
except for parts of the Huniade castle, neither the medieval urban
structure nor any building dated before 1716 can be seen today.
Timisoara is located in a swampy plain where two rivers, Timis and
Bega, periodically flooded the territory. The confused network of
subsidiary streams and swamps led to the fact the city, built on both
sides of the river Bega, took its name from the river Timis.
Some historians suppose that a Roman fortress called Zurobara or
Zambara existed in these places. This was later conquered by the Goths
and the Avars, the latter of which gave one of the rivers the name of
Bega. Archaeologists haven't found traces of such a fortress, and it
is presumed to have been submerged by the swamps. Yet, on the north
side of the town traces of the so called "Roman ditch" can be found,
although these cannot be accurately dated.
After the retreat of the Avars, a Romanian village appeared in this
place. In 896, the Duke Glad, believed to have ruled in this region,
acknowledged Hungarian suzerainty. In 1010, the region of Timisoara
was included in Hungary. No further documentation exists until 1203,
when its name first appeared in documents as a city, named "Catrum
Temesiensis".
In the 13 th Century Timisoara, chief town of the county and owner of
a feudal estate, had a bipolar structure: first the fortress, which
had a quadrilateral shape with an almost rectangular net of streets
and a fairly dense population in a compact area: and the rural
village, which was a disorderly development at the north of the
fortress.
Between 1315 and 1323, the development of the city was favoured by the
circumstance that the King, Charles Robert of Anjou, established his
residence with all of his court there. He built a castle, which was
subsequently rebuilt by the Huniades in the 16 th Century. The castle
was completely transformed after the siege of 1849. The building was
once more reshaped in romantic style in 1910, and it is now the oldest
building of the town and the only one left from the medieval period.
After the conquest of Belgrade in 1521, Timisoara was quickly
fortified by Italian architects. We know that at least three of the
gate towers were transformed at that time. The Turkish chronicler
Mustafa Gelalzade named Timisoara "an envied fortress ... the most
important and the strongest in the whole land of Transylvania ... this
strong fortress all the sultans want". Timisoara resisted the Turkish
siege of 1551, but the next summer the Turks conquered the Water
Tower, forcing the garrison to surrender.
This caused the town's ethnic structure to change. Privileged Muslims
arrived: beside handicraft and agriculture, commerce developed. In the
second part of the 17 th Century, the town was divided into four
districts and the suburbs into 10 quarters. The houses were built of
adobe and covered with wooden tiles; the streets were paved with
board. One drank water from the river Bega (mistakenly named Timis, as
already stated), also a repository for local garbage. The town had a
polycentric character, because of geographic conditions (canals and
swamps) and as a result of military necessities every district having
its own fortifications.
Its geographic position made Timisoara an important strategic point at
the beginning of the 18 th Century, due primarily to the expansion of
the Austrian Empire. In 1716, after the siege of the fortress by the
Prince Eugene of Savoie, the town fell under the Austrian Empire's
rule. The Turkish garrison and the Muslim civilians retired south of
the Danube. After the peace of Passarowitz (Pazarovac) in 1718, the
whole region of Banat and other territories formerly under Turkish
domination became Austrian Crown estates.
After the Austrian conquest began an important process of
colonization, especially with the German catholics from Wuertenberg,
Schwaben, Nassau, etc. The bad climate caused a high rate of
mortality, with lots of immigrants dying of malaria within 2-3 months
of their arrival. That is why the population's growth was provided
primarily by immigration for some time: as a result, the rate of
German Catholics reached as high as 50% of the population. This
situation was an exception, however, since the rest of the region,
despite colonization, remained primarily Romanian.
Being good craftsmen, the Germans developed industry and trade.
Because of the need to provide favourable condition in which the
colonists could settle, the Austrian administration began a
reorganization of all existing villages of Banat along with the
building of new villages. The result is that the region was
restructured into an organized net of villages, orderly structured and
characterized by their compactness.
The most important territorial achievements were hydrotechnical:
regularization of the rivers and the reclamation of the swamps.
Between 1728 and 1732 the river Bega had its course regularized to
create a shipping canal between Timisoara and downstream. Timisoara
thus became linked through the Tisa and Danube to the Central European
fluvial shipping system, capable of coping with heavy transports
before the appearance of the railway.
In 1757 the engineer Maxamilian Fremaut designed the regularization
systems Timis-Bega, built between 1759-176l. In order to complete this
achievement, local peasants had to labour 3 million workdays. But, its
effect has been that since that time, Timisoara has been safe from
inundations by its rivers.
Eugene of Savoie named the Count Claude Florimund of Mercy as governor
of the city. The first building activities were those for
fortification. Because the existing fortress didn't match the new war
technology, some possible variants of Vauban fortifications (a
bastionary polygonal fortress) were studied and a new defence system
was built between 1723-1765. The town 's surface proposed to be
included inside the walls was twice as large as that of the medieval
city. Small fragments of this fortification system can still be seen
in Timisoara.
Although the first buildings constructed after the decision to
completely transform the town were those with military roles (the
fortifications, military barracks, etc.), by 1725 a plan for the
complete reconstruction of the inner city was adopted. The designed
rectangular street network, completely unrelated to the former street
system, necessitated the pulling down of every existing building.
These plans, in addition to the already low quality of existing
buildings, led to the fact that no house, with the exception os the
castle, was maintained.
The urban rectangular net was organized around two squares: the
military one or Parade Square (today Liberty Square or Old Townhall
Square) and the Jesuits' Square (St. George). Important building
activity started in 1727. The Count of Mercy presented a "Construction
regulation for the city and fortress of Timisoara" to the War Council
(since Timisoara was near the empire's border it had great military
significance. All building activities were dependent on the War
Council until 1755). In 1733 part of the inner city was already
rebuilt with brick, having continuous front sides along streets and
creating rectangular blocks. In the northern part of the city, in the
part where the city had been extended, a new square, Union's Place,
was planned. After several projects, the complexity of the composition
was increased because the Catholic Bishop of Cenad was moved to
Timisoara from Szeged. A new cathedral and the Bishop's Palace
enriched the square's importance, since these were added to the
preexisting Governor's Palace. This became the biggest palace being
extended beyond two blocks.
One must note that the majority of projects were being drawn up in
Timisoara and not in Vienna. Architects were often taught their skills
locally. For instance, Caspar Dissel, one of the designers of the
Baroque Dome of the Union's Place, came to Timisoara as a bricklayer
in 1722 and was qualified as an engineer in 1731. The Leadership of
the Service Building, which had teaching rights, was created in 1776.
Its leader was an "architecture and hydrotechnical works' Professor".
As already shown, a characteristic feature of Timisoara is that the
town developed in the 18th Century as the result of an important
constructive effort, with an almost rigorously rectangular texture of
streets directed north-south and east-west, was practically a new
town, whose structural principles ignored the old, disordered
directions dating back to the period of Ottoman domination. Such
reconstruction of the town was possible only after the improvement of
the ground sanitation system took place. The new town was the result
of town-planing designed by professionals and rigorously respected.
So, 250 years ago in Timisoara, there existed clear town planning on
which the whole generation of building activity was based. A really
interesting line of research is the way in which this plan came to be
put into practice, considering the fact that it referred to an
inhabited and densely built area. As far back as 1776 there was an
Office of Architecture of the Chamber Administration, which supervised
every new building as well as the restoration of the existing ones.
The authorities were supervising the alignment and height of the
buildings in accordance with the regulations, but also they were
monitoring the functional destinations of the buildings as well as the
materials used. A building's license could be suspended by the local
authorities not only in case a regulation had not been observed, but
also in case the building's term of completion hadn't been respected.
For the existing buildings whose emplacement were not in keeping with
the town's planning, only repairs or adobe and wood alterations were
permitted. The administration also indicated which buildings were to
be demolished the next year, and the so-called "magistrates" were
responsible for the observance of regulations and the timely
executions of demolitions even before the Office of Architecture came
into being.
As a result of the war 1737-1739, the Banat again became a border
province and Timisoara one of the Empire's "Principal walled cities"
in the east. Efforts to build fortifications then increased. The huge
technological documentation issued in those years has been, to great
extent, preserved. The report and project issued yearly include an
exact account of the situation as well as an indication of the
activities which were going to be undertaken the following year.
Written and drawn documents were attached to the plan, justifying both
the works carried out in the previous year and the works for which the
license was being solicited for the next year.
Palanca Mare (a vast suburb surrounding the walls from east through
north to the west) burned in 1738. The advanced stage of the
fortification brought about the complete disappearance of the medieval
suburbs: Palanca Mare and Palanca Mica(situated south). These
disappeared because of the huge belt of bastioned fortifications which
had an average width of 585 m and outside it the "esplanade", a
"non-edificandi" field of 950 m wide. The fortifications and the
esplanade drove the new outside districts 1700-2000 m away from the
walled city center. This meant that not only the walled city
(previously named Cetate, the Fortress), but also the exterior
districts were demolished and completely rebuilt. Under these
circumstances, new districts were planned, and they developed
economically. A contradiction appears between the city, with its
military and administrative role, and the districtsdeveloped on
economic bases. The central district, Cetate, contained the greater
part of the public buildings: the two "Magistrates", the German and
so-called Rascian one, Romanian and Serbian, reflecting the existence
of the two main religions, Catholic and Orthodox; schools, the civil
and military hospitals; barracks, dioceses, inns, shops. That is why
in the narrow space inside the walls, the area occupied by
institutions exceeds that of residential buildings.
Despite of the very clear distribution of the administrative
responsibility of the "Magistrates" over the different districts, the
different nationalities (Germans and Hungarians as Catholics;
Romanians and Serbians as Orthodox; Jews), lived relatively mixed
together in the various parts of the town. That is why, starting in
1750, one Rascian counsellor is selected in the German Magistrate and
vice-versa. Within the walled city, placed under German jurisdiction,
a block was attributed to the Racian magistrate and half a block to
the Jewish community.
In the 19th Century, Timisoara became an important industrial center,
especially the eastern part, the Fabric district, where the water of
the river Bega is used for industry. Thousands of men worked in the
town's factories.
Urban life is influenced during the period by the introduction of the
technological innovations of the century:
* 1855 - Telegraph
* 1857 - Public illumination with gas lamp
* 1857 - The town is connected to European railways
* 1869 - Horse-drawn trams
* 1870 - 1880 -Steel bridges are built replacing the old wooden ones
* 1881 - Telephone
* 1884, November 12 - Timisoara is the first European city with
electrical public illumination
* 1895 - Some streets are covered with asphalt
* 1899 - Electric tram
With these economic conditions, the fortifications became an
impediment, and they were pulled down between 1890-1910. Only the big
Barrack of "Transylvania" remained until 1960, and three small
fragments remain to be seen to this day.
Although the place had an ideal position in town, because of the
difficulties of demolishing the foundations and because the ditch was
merely filled with earth and sand, an important part of the territory
is planted and became a sort of ring of parks around the center of the
town. The city has since been given the nickname of "Park town" or
"Flower town".
The demolition of the walls made a new urban plan necessary, allowing
the possibility of linking exterior districts with the walled city.
The principal element around which the new urban plan was conceived at
the beginning of the 20th Century was an axis of boulevards from east
to west, linking two of the most important former outside districts,
which were situated on opposite parts of the walled city. This range
of boulevards was nearly completed by 1914, bordered by Jugenendstiel
buildings.
A part of this axis, that having the Theatre as a central element,
became the most important civic space, replacing Union's Square in
importance.
In august 1919, the region of Banat was united with Romania. After
this event, new orthodox churches appeared (built in traditional
Romanian style, but much larger than the originals) to match the local
silhouette influenced by the existing Catholic cathedrals. The most
important of these is the imposing Metropolitan Cathedral, built to
counterbalance the National Theatre (also known as the Opera House),
already mentioned before. The building, finished in 1938, required
special efforts owing to the bad condition of the ground: 1700 pillars
of reinforced concrete going down 10 meters and consolidated by a
reinforced concrete plate more than 60 cm thick. Conceived by the
architect Traianescu in Moldavian Byzantine style, with 11 towers and
96 meters high, the Cathedral became, together with the Theatre, a
symbolic building for the city.
Between the two World Wars, villas in neo-Romanian and cubist style
were built, completely linking the old districts of the town.
The period following the second World War is linked to contemporary
town planning and, therefore, is not the object of this short
historical review.
_________________________________________________________________
by
Smaranda Mara Bica, D.E., Arch.,
Assistant Professor,
Technical University of Timisoara,
Romania
[ Presentation funded by a grant from the International Visitors'
Program, United States Information Service ]