The Herculean task of saving Europe’s oldest spa town

Photo by Elizabeth Short

With scriptures dating back to 153 AD, Băile Herculane, a small town of about 5,000 inhabitants in western Romania, claims to be the oldest spa town in Europe. It appears as if it is straight out of a fairy-tale – in fact mythology is part of the area’s genetic make-up. According to legend, the Roman god Hercules once stopped in the valley to bathe, lending the town its name. Today, a statue of the hero stands proudly in the centre, but his crumbling surroundings appear to be just a few years shy of becoming a ghost town.

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Although many buildings are bordering on derelict, the architecture in Băile Herculane is striking and diverse, owing to its tumultuous history. ​The town’s historic baths were primarily developed by the Romans 2,000 years ago and can still be visited today. However it was the Austrians who invested significantly in the area, after taking administrative control of it from the Ottomans in 1718. It was not long before Băile Herculane became a hotspot for the Viennese aristocracy who developed its infrastructure and commissioned many of the baroque buildings that can be found throughout the area.

Among them is the train station – which was a replica of a Viennese hunting castle, the Rococo Elisabeth residence – built as a holiday home for Empress Sisi, and the Casino complex – an ornate arcade and pavilion embellished with hand-painted murals and decorative wrought iron.

The spa town witnessed another revival during the Romanian communist period. Labour laws introduced in the 1950s guaranteed holidays for workers and Băile Herculane rose to prominence as a place where citizens could spend their state-allotted holiday vouchers. Treatments at the communist health spas assured visitors that the medicinal springs would help cure their ailments. It was during this era that the architectural landscape was again diversified. Many modernist and brutalist structures were erected. Among them was Hotel Roman, which today is a favourite among socialist modernist architecture fans and draws in pilgrims from all over Europe.

It was also towards the end of the communist period, as funds became more and more sparse, that the old imperial buildings began to fall into a state of disrepair. After the fall of the Iron Curtain the decline escalated, as state-owned buildings were privatised only to be neglected by their new owners.

Mission to save Neptune baths

Oana Chirila, a Romanian architecture student, grew up visiting Băile Herculane as a young child. After making a nostalgic return trip to the place several years ago, she was struck by the dilapidated conditions of many of the buildings. “On the one hand, I was impressed by the beauty of the old city centre and its potential, but I was also just shocked by the state of decay most of the buildings were in,” she says.

Roused by the urgency and lack of measures being taken to save the heritage site, she wrote an article to draw awareness about the area on a viral website BoredPanda. Within just three days, the article gained 20,000 views. Soon people from around the world began writing to her, asking how they could help. By 2017, the Herculane Project had fully come to life. Drawing a diverse group of people from all over the world, they have a following of over 18,000 likes on Facebook alone.

The project is mainly focused on the Neptune Baths – a grand imperial structure that dominates the town centre. Surrounded by a moat of overgrown shrubbery, a wrought iron bridge paves the way to the regal but rusting structure. Inside, an ornate golden fountain remains, and stucco detailing can be found on the walls. However, many of the rooms have been stripped bare and the floorboards are chaotically uprooted. Last winter, part of the roof collapsed, making the grade-A listed building’s restoration more urgent than ever.

A sign at the end of the bridge that faces the baths warns people not to trespass. “But people enter without authorisation anyway. They graffiti the walls, break things and steal historically valuable objects”, Oana explains. Nevertheless, she is on a mission to raise 100,000 euro to help with the restoration. Unfortunately however, public trespassers are not the only people she has to be concerned about – there is also the owners of the building and land.

“The management of the (former) local administration did an exchange with the estate that led to a judicial mess, where it ended up with more than one owner, and a sequester on the land”, she says, elaborating on complications that prevent the project from having access to the building.

Furthermore, in Romania, owners of heritage buildings are liable to conserve them, restore them and keep them in a good state. If they open up for business without doing this to an adequate standard, then they can be fined and expropriated – meaning that the state can confiscate it from them. It is suspected that for this reason, many private owners do not open their properties for business.

Legal limbo

In 2001, much of the land in Herculane’s historical centre was sold to a company owned by Romanian businessman, Iosif Armas, with the understanding that he would invest and restore the buildings. He is now on trial on an embezzlement charge linked to the deal. To add to the story, the town’s former mayor, Nicușor Vasilescu, has also been charged in connection with the sell-off.

Regarding the Neptune Baths, Armas may own the land, however the building is owned by the local administration, further complicating the legal process of gaining access to the structure to begin restoration. Despite the legal limbo, in October the project finally gained the permit to begin work. So far 40,000 euro have been raised by Project Herculane, which will go towards an emergency intervention that would allow the partial restoration of the baths.

Regardless of political scandal, the project has been well received by the authorities. “Sometimes we don’t communicate as well as we could, but they have supported us with everything,” Oana says. She however warns that there needs to be a more streamlined approach when it comes to envisioning the town’s future: “It requires an integrated strategy, one that encompasses the medical, touristic and cultural facets. Right now, the development is chaotic. There aren’t local administrative rules in place yet to restrict the actions of certain developers.”

Oana emphasises that restoration is a discipline defined by care and precision, the respect of values and the correct use of materials. “As an architect, working in such an environment means you are a doctor, a keeper of all the decades that shaped the value of a monument. Sometimes the building ends up becoming the architect, but really, history knows what’s better. All we have to do is listen.” With more and more damage caused each winter, the Herculean task of saving Europe’s oldest spa town is now more urgent than ever.

Elizabeth Short is a freelance British journalist focusing primarily on art, culture and politics in Eastern Europe.

civil society, crowdfunding, feature, Romania