The Banffy Palace is an imposing Baroque edifice. It was designed by the German architect Johann Eberhard Blaumann and was built between 1774 and 1785. It now houses the cityÆs Art Museum. This has a highly valuable collection of Romanian and European paintings, graphic art and decorative arts from the 15th to the 20th century. Many treasures of the museum used to belong to the collections of the former Transylvanian Museum; most were part of the ôVirgil Cioflecö collection, donated by the art critic Virgil Cioflec (1876-1948) to the University of Cluj in 1929. The National Gallery of the museum was entirely reorganized in 1990, with much display space reserved to Transylvanian artists.
