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The palatial basilica
Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa
The baroque palace of Oradea - front view
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The Baroque Palace of  Oradea ( Romania ) , founded in 1762 by the Bishop Baron Adam Patachich,  as The Roman Catholic Bishopric Palace of northern Transylvania .The same designer of  Cardinals Palace in Bratislava & Royal Palace of Budapest , the Austrian architect Anton Franz Hillebrandt , one of Europe`s eighteenth century best , is the one that projected the plan, while engineer A.J. Neumann was in charge of  its massive construction with the 365 exterior windows resembling the days of year and  one hundred and twenty  large rooms distributed on three levels , its architecture beeing the late Austrian Baroque style , a more sober and practical type compared to the overly ornamented French Baroque for example. The building was meant to resemble on a smaller scale the famous Royal Belvedere Palace from Wien , which , maybe , was one of the reasons along with other religious conflicts that made Empress Maria Theresa of Austria to repudiate the founder , Baron Adam Patachich , the bishop of Oradea between 1759 and  1776 , when later she was  banning him by send him to a much lesser importance diocese , somewhere in Kalocsa , Hungary . Nevertheless , the baron was a charismatic , highly educated humanist and luminated patron of arts , who is mostly remebered for the finest music and musicians he surrounded himself with  ; so this is where  Michael Haydn , legendary composer  Joseph Haydn`s  brother , worked as a Kapellmaister to the the bishop`s orchestra , who also employed at the court other famous European  composers and violonists like
Wenzel Pichl and Carl Ditter von Dittersdorf between 1765-1769  serving as a Musikdirektor ( see pages ahead for more ) ...
        Finally, in year 1771 , the Emperess Maria Theresa and her little son , the future king Joseph II of Austria , were staying here in a visit to make peace with a place whose project she did not fancied , a visit soon after  the palace has misfortunately burned down
entirely in a fire of year 1773 but being reconstructed imediately  by the next bishop in , after the very exact same original plans .
In the year 1855 a new side and entrance is added graciously in tone and respect with the initial building ,with grand double stairways .
Later in , when Romania gained possesion of Transylvania and after World Wars , in 1978 the Palace becomes a museum hosting many
large and fine archeological , historical , natural sciences , etnographical and art collections under the name of ,, Muzeul Tarii Crisurilor ,, .
  The front courtyard is an artistic park with  large old bronze and marble statues of historical figures and also home  to an absolutely  fabulous baroque parish church erected in 1752 even before the palace, a work of Italian architect Giovanni Battista Ricca modelated after the mother church of the Jesuites , Chiesa di Jesu in Rome . that contains the relics of king Saint Ladislaus , born in year 1040 , a splint of his skull being kept here in a gold box while in year 1992 , himself , the Pope John Paul II brought the church to a Basilica rank ...
Its architecture it is said it was inspired from the mother church of  Jesuits order  , Chiesa di Jesu in Rome , Italy ...

                                                                         by  Radu I. Frentiu