BestCluj / Journal
Writing about what happens here
Reporting, research and guides on art in Cluj. Every piece says where it knows things from.
- 01
The week in Cluj, 26 October–1 November: Romeo, Alternosfera
The week in Cluj 26 Oct 2026
The week’s programme includes theatre, concerts, exhibitions, launches and a folklore festival-competition. Events take place at Casa de Cultură a Studenților, the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, Form Space, the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum and other venues in the city.
- 02
The weekend in Cluj, 23–25 October: FJORD, Oh, John...
The weekend in Cluj 22 Oct 2026
From Friday to Sunday, the programme includes exhibitions, concerts, theatre and film at museums, performance venues and cinemas.
- 03
Bánffy Castle in Răscruci receives its Europa Nostra plaque
News 19 Oct 2026 Loredana Vale
The 2026 European Heritage Award, won by Cluj County Council for the castle’s restoration, was marked on 12 October with a plaque at the castle. The restoration cost about 11.5 million euro.
- 04
Photography as ethnographic document 2026: 40 photographers of today’s village, on show from 21 October
News 19 Oct 2026 Loredana Vale
The national F-DE competition’s exhibition opens at the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania, with pictures of the contemporary Romanian village by photographers from Romania and Poland. One of the prize-winners is from Cluj.
- 05
The week in Cluj, 19–25 October: FJORD, Toamna Muzicală
The week in Cluj 19 Oct 2026
This week’s programme includes workshops, concerts, festivals and film screenings. Events take place at Muzeul Alexandru Duma, Cinema Victoria, the Transylvania State Philharmonic, Casa de Cultură a Studenților and other venues in the city.
- 06
Byzantine Art Days, 21–24 October: papers, illuminated manuscripts and Byzantine chant
News 19 Oct 2026 Loredana Vale
The 22nd edition of the Academy of Byzantine Arts and Studies symposium runs at UAD’s Casa Matei, the Romanian Academy Library and the Ethnographic Museum. Entry to every event is free.
- 07
Neighbourhood Library Days, 19–23 October: free membership and workshops at the County Library
News 19 Oct 2026 Loredana Vale
The 30th edition brings events for children, teenagers and adults to the main building and three branches of the “Octavian Goga” County Library. Membership is free while it lasts.
- 08
A village inside the city: where the houses in the Ethnographic Park came from, and who lived in them
Report 11 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The potter's house from Josenii Bârgăului has the tower blocks of Dâmbu Rotund directly behind it. That is not a framing error — it is what happens when a village is moved, house by house, into a city that then grows around it.
- 09
What opens on 18 September in the Bogdánffy House
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
The Plan B Foundation opens a public space for contemporary art in an early nineteenth-century house. Its first exhibition hangs Piero Manzoni on the same wall as two artists from Cluj.
- 10
The second most-visited cultural place in Cluj is a house students asked for in 1921
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
The “Dumitru Fărcaș” Students' Culture House has 4,950 Google reviews — more than the Art Museum, the National Opera and the National Theatre. Its listing is claimed by nobody.
- 11
The oldest pharmacy in Cluj and one of its newest galleries are in the same house
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
The Hintz House opened the city's first pharmacy in 1573. Today the building has two entrances, two institutions, and two audiences that barely meet.
- 12
What gets searched is not what gets visited. We measured a second time, differently
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
Search volume says who is looked for. Google reviews say who was actually there. We collected both signals for fifty places in Cluj, and they do not overlap.
- 13
What came after the Paintbrush Factory: a house in the centre, five reviews, and an exhibition that is open
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
Centrul de Interes operates in the Hintz House, at Regele Ferdinand 1. It has published hours, exhibitions and guided tours. It also has five Google reviews, against 176 for the Factory that closed.
- 14
Five creatives of the week: 8–14 September
Five creatives of the week 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
Five people with something on a wall or a stage in Cluj this week. Each with the date, the place and the source. Four of them are searched for by nobody.
- 15
The cinemas of Cluj: the most-searched cultural place in the city is a film hall
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
“Cinema Florin Piersic” draws 5,400 searches a month — more than any museum, gallery or theatre in this guide. And not one of the city's four cinemas has opening hours on Google.
- 16
Cluj has two operas and two national theatres, in two buildings. We measured all four
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
“Opera cluj” draws 6,600 searches a month. Every gallery in this guide combined does not reach a tenth of that. The performing arts are, measurably, the culture this city actually looks for.
- 17
The Paintbrush Factory closed in 2022, not 2019. A correction, and what actually happened
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
We published the wrong year in this site's timeline. We checked it, fixed it, and read the closing statement — which is harsher than anything we would have written.
- 18
Cluj county had thousands of glassworkers. Today “atelier sticlă Cluj” returns fourteen glaziers
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
Over five thousand people worked at Turda before 1989. A thousand at Gherla in 2003, making hand-worked glassware that went to Japan and the United States. We went looking for what is left.
- 19
Untold has twice the search demand of every cultural institution in Cluj combined
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
We have measured culture in Cluj four times, by different methods. Each time we missed the biggest thing in it: four days of festival outweigh a year of institutions.
- 20
The busiest galleries in Cluj have no search demand at all
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
We read 205 events across 45 days, grouped them by venue, then measured every venue. The three busiest art spaces in the city draw zero searches a month.
- 21
Craft is not searched locally. It is the one section of this site that should not be about Cluj
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
“Ie tradițională” draws 8,100 searches a month in Romania and 320 in Cluj. On institutions, Cluj is half the national demand. On craft, it is four per cent.
- 22
The university has four museums. Two of them have fewer than twenty-five reviews
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The Zoology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Botanic Garden museums. Their hours differ, they are close together, and two of them are practically unknown.
- 23
The most-searched independent space in Cluj is a dance company that publishes its entire team
Report 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
NON Centru de Arte Performative draws more searches than any gallery in the city. Twelve people, each with a name and a role on the site. Not one of them is searched for by anyone.
- 24
The Hungarian Opera has 1,600 searches a month and a domain that will not open at all
Report 10 Sept 2026 Loredana Vale
The domain hungarianopera.ro serves a certificate issued for a completely different address, so browsers block it. The site that works is a different one, and nobody tells you that.
- 25
The Bánffy Palace: what the building is, and how to get inside
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The most representative Baroque building in Transylvania stands on Piața Unirii and has housed the Art Museum since 1951. Its opening hours do not appear in the museum's Google listing. They are here.
- 26
What Romania looks up, and what the world looks up, when they look up Romanian painters
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
We measured forty Romanian painters — twenty formed in Cluj, twenty from outside that circle. Romania looks up its dead. The world looks up the living ones from Cluj.
- 27
Romania's first open-air museum is in Cluj, and it is almost a hundred years old
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The “Romulus Vuia” Ethnographic Park opened on 1 June 1929. In 1930 it received a sheepfold from Poiana Sibiului — together with the shepherd and seventy-five sheep.
- 28
Four exhibitions at the Art Museum this September
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
Belu-Simion Fainaru, Elekes Gyula, Dana Fabini and Florin Olari — with opening dates and the visiting hours the museum publishes and Google Maps does not carry.
- 29
Nobody searches for “artist sticlar”. And the glass tradition of Cluj county is not the one you are picturing
Research 10 Sept 2026 Robert Eduard Antal
“Glass blowing” draws 22,200 monthly searches in the United States. “Artist sticlar” draws zero in Romania. Between those two figures sits a craft that began twenty kilometres from Cluj, and that is painted rather than blown.
- 30
The school that produced the Cluj School turns one hundred
Report 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The University of Art and Design was founded in 1926. In 2026 it turns a century old — and it is measured at five times the search demand of any gallery in the city.
- 31
Where to learn art in Cluj if you are not eighteen with a university application
Guide 10 Sept 2026 Meda Andreea Căpîlna
The “Tudor Jarda” People's School of Arts has run since 1955, teaches everything from accordion to jazz, and publishes its fees. It is searched by 590 people a month and has nineteen reviews.