Excavation and renovation of the castle and Castle Church in Târgu Mureş
MúzeumCafé 44.
The castle and Castle Church monument complex in Târgu Mureş is one of the most important items of cultural heritage with a Hungarian connection in Transylvania. The four-hectare area surrounded by walls constituted the smallest royal town in the region. The earliest nucleus of the castle is its Calvinist church, which until 1556 was a Franciscan friary. Franciscans settled in the locality in the early 1300s, presumably using a royal or nobiliary mansion as a monastic house. Building of a new friary took place in the late 14th century. Construction is dated to the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. The still-standing monastery church was built in the early 15th century, along with a sacristy and chapel, while the northern wing of the monastery, a refectory and cloister were added later. The cloister building is the most significant late Gothic complex in Sekler Land. With its outstanding mass it defined and still partly defines the townscape. The third construction period, during the regency of János Hunyadi, saw construction of the 55-metre-high monastery tower, and presumably the interior painting of the chancel appeared at the same time. The fourth major period dates to the 1480s. On the initiative of Transylvanian voivode István Báthory, several towns and localities were fortified. The castle moat first appeared in 1487. The bastion built on the south-eastern side of the monastery survives, as does the ruined southern wall. Excavations have produced unique finds. It was favourable that from the 1730s the military took possession of the castle area and used it until the end of the 1990s. As a consequence the former territory of the town wasn’t built on at the time of the industrial revolution and military use prevented unwarranted interference in the post-1945 era.