What you see

The corner is the building’s defining move: circular in plan, capped with an ellipsoidal roof decorated with profiled sheet metal in sinuous lines and volutes with vegetal ornament. From a distance it reads as a tower; close up, the surface detail asserts itself — the kind of total ornament that characterises the Secession at its most committed.

The facade on Strada Republicii is arranged vertically in a natural, almost intuitive succession of compositional and decorative elements — a sequence that produces what the Romanian architectural inventory describes as a pleasant sense of spatial comfort. The centrepiece is a projecting bay (bowindou) supported by a massive console and ending in a balcony enclosed by a floral wrought-iron balustrade. Set into the concavity above is the central motif: a female head emerging from a dense wreath of leaves, flowers, and branches — a Secession archetype executed at the confident scale of a commercial palace.