COD LMI: AB-II-m-A-00098

Date of construction: 1715 - 1736, 1780

Location: No. 1, Gabriel Bethlen Street

Opened: based on a prior appointment

Valuable collections of old books and art works of the institute bearing the name of its founder are hosted by the decommissioned church of the former Trinitarian monastery, which was built starting in 1719. The church was an important objective mirroring the urbanistic works through which the city went through in the first decades of the 18th century. After 1786, when the order of the Trinitarian ceased to exist, it served as a military hospital for a while, being transformed into a library and an astronomic observatory in 1792 at the initiative of Bishop Ignaţiu Batthyani. Also, the oldest weather station in Romania functioned here between 1840 and 1953. The library holds over 635 000 volumes and due to its collection of manuscripts and old books it is the most important documentary library in the country.

The famous "Codex Aureus" (written in golden letters around the year 800), "Biblia Sacra" (13th century), "Misale Strigoniense" (1377), "Heroides" signed by poet Publius Ovidius Naso, ”Palia de la Orăștie” (1582), ”The New Testament of Bălgrad” (1648), etc. stand out from the rich collection of manuscripts and prints (including approximately 600 incunabula representing 30% of the incunabula in Romania and approximately 80% of the Latin manuscripts existing in the country).

A museum was recently inaugurated in the building.