Things to do
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Alba Carolina Citadel
Plan the walls and the museums as two separate visits. The walls are free and open at every hour, but almost everything inside them is ticketed and shuts at six, so an evening arrival gets you the fortress with every door locked.
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Apor Palace
A seventeenth century Renaissance palace inside the walls, built for the Transylvanian treasurer and later used as the Habsburg garrison headquarters. It is the best surviving domestic building of its date in the citadel. The university holds it now, so the courtyard is open and the interiors are seen only from outside.
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Coronation Cathedral
The Orthodox cathedral built in 1921 for the coronation of Ferdinand and Marie as sovereigns of the enlarged kingdom, in a Wallachian style deliberately imported into Transylvania. Its courtyard plan is closer to a monastery than a cathedral. It stands opposite the Catholic cathedral inside the walls, and the two together show how the citadel was recast as a national symbol.
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National Museum of the Union
The history museum in the Babylon building, covering the region from prehistory to 1918 and holding the documents of the union declared here on 1 December. The date is now the national day. It sits beside Union Hall and the two share a ticket, which takes about an hour and a half between them.
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St Michael's Cathedral
The Roman Catholic cathedral begun about 1246, the oldest and largest medieval church in Transylvania, holding the tomb of John Hunyadi who died in 1456. Its Romanesque core survives inside later gothic work. It stands a short walk from the Orthodox cathedral, and a Baroque organ fills the west end of the nave.
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Union Hall
The former military casino where 1,228 delegates voted the union of Transylvania with Romania in 1918, restored to how the room looked that day. It is a single hall and it takes twenty minutes. The history museum stands next door on the same ticket, which joins the room to the documents signed in it.
