Drumul prin istorie al unui monument. Sala Unirii din Alba Iulia / A Monument's Road Through History. The Union Hall of Alba Iulia

15 December 2018


Authors
Valer Moga
Abstract

The Union Hall in Alba Iulia intensively imposed itself on the collective mentality of the Romanians as the main evocative monument of the union of Transylvania with Romania. It is also related to the crowning of King Ferdinand I as a sovereign of the Romanian state resulting from the Union Acts of 1918. As a consequence, it occupies a special place in the historical geography of Alba Iulia. The Union Hall has been the venue for various events, some positive, some prejudicial, that have marked its area of significance and architecture. The present study attempts to identify and characterize these events, distributed over the course of a century, relating them to government policies and regime changes. One of the ideas pursued in the article is that the alternative to democracy – totalitarianism – not only marked the events that took place in Alba Iulia, but also the monuments evoking these events. From this point of view, pursuing the history of the Union Hall can be a useful methodological approach.

Keywords
Alba Iulia, Union, coronation, Officers’ Casino, Union Hall.