Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM

“This year on December 11, the Sibiu Public Bath will celebrate its 110th anniversary. I managed to see not only the designs made by a German architect, as the bath has been built over five years by constructors brought from Vienna, Budapest and Cluj, but also pictures of the initial construction. I found on e-bay an old, foreign newspaper featuring an article about the Sibiu Public Bath and the Munich Public Bath, which described the construction process of the Sibiu bath. We want to provide our clients with high quality services, but also to maintain the specifics of this venue,” Ioana Dancanet said.

Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM

According to her, not only the public bath has been operational since 1904, but also its power plant and a huge steam ironing board, especially made in Vienna. On entering the Sibiu public bath, there is a clock on a wall dating from 1904 showing the hour; the clock has a mechanic, original mechanism, with beats per second. The former water tower can still be found in the yard of the public bath; at the beginning, water was brought with the cistern, from tens of kilometers away, from Sadu, and changed on a weekly basis.

Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM

“The Sibiu public bath welcomes at least 200 clients in each day, most of them children. We have at least 6,500 clients per year, but in the winter, the number can exceed 8,000 visitors,” Dancanat elaborates.

Many children come here to learn how to swim. One of the swimming instructors is Adrian Ganju, who has worked in the United States for ten years.

This place is also frequented by people interested in spa treatments, for example contrast bath therapies, also known as hot/cold immersion therapy that increases the local blood circulation. Also, this is the only spa in Romania equipped for taking Romanian-Irish sauna.

Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM

The Sibiu City Hall continues this year with the series of investments in the local public bath. Revamping works on the sauna are currently underway, this being closed to the public until September. The sauna of the public bath was built 110 years ago, being a Romanian-Irish sauna, unique in Romania. The complex currently undergoing modernization works is made up of a wet sauna, a dry sauna, 32 welding booths, two pools for contrast bathing (one with hot water, 35 degrees temperature and another one with cold water, 10 degrees), showers and massage rooms.

The works under the contract regard plating both pools with glass mosaic, setting up the water filtration and circulation systems for the two pools with quartz sand, installing a heat transfer equipment, automatic heat exchangers and automatic systems to measure and monitor chlorine and pH levels. The value of this contract is 165,000 lei, pre-VAT.

Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM

The hair salon was also modernized, being moved from the ground floor to the first floor. The electricity, water and sewerage systems have been changed, as well as the tiles; a waiting room was also built.

Works on the beauty parlor are also underway. Besides the change of the electricity, water and sewerage systems, new tiles and furniture pieces have been purchased.

Following the modernization works carried out over the past few years, the services provided by the Public Bath became vary varied and improved their quality, and as a result, more and more people choose this place as their holiday destination. Over January-July 2014, the Sibiu Public Bath recorded a total number of 46,017 clients, up 3,000 people compared to the same period of 2013. Even in the summer months, May, June and July, the number of clients has been on the rise, with 18,573 people having visited the bath in the aforementioned period, compared to 14,823 in the similar interval of the previous year.

The largest investment worth over 2 million lei was made by the city hall ten years ago.

The plot of land was initially used for the construction of Transylvania’s first factory producing stearin candles, opened in 1840.

After the factory was moved on the current street Turnului, Franz Fruhbeck Senior opened the first steam public bath in the city in the ’40s of the 19th century.

In 1886, Johann Habermann bought the establishment from Fruhbeck’s descendants. The bath was located at that time on the site of the current pediatrics hospital in the Astra Park.

The idea of building a public bath accessible to everyone in Sibiu in late 19th century belonged to Dr. Carl Wolff. The General Assembly of the Savings Office (Hermannstadter Allgemeinen Sparkassa) provided the financial resources for the construction of this place from its reserve funds.

The construction, designed by Karl Hocheder (1854-1917), architecture professor at the Technical University in Munich, combines various styles, i.e. Baroque elements and Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) art (late 19th century — early 20th century), being the most representative building in the city for this architectural style. Professor Karl Hocheder charged one of his best assistants with supervising the construction works. Hans Heckner together with craftsman Gustav Matz and his team did a brilliant job, being able to inaugurate the public bath on Dec. 11, 1904.

As for the architectonic structure, the Sibiu Public Bath is an almost exact replica of the Muller Bath in Munich, as both are designed by the same architect. At that time, no other city as large as Sibiu in Austria-Hungary had such an institution.

The complex included a swimming pool 21 meters in length, 9 meters in width, covered with sea green coloured tiles; a Romanian-Irish sauna, which consisted of a steam room with 32 booths, wet sauna, dry sauna, two pools for contrast bathing, showers, massage rooms.

The facilities located on the first floor were ten booths with tubs and showers for bathing, and five rooms for spa treatments: treatments with mud brought from Battaglia, Italy, electric light baths or a bathtub for galvanic baths. The majority of these services are still available.

The growing popularity of this establishment convinced Dr. Carl Wolff to take into consideration the idea of providing foreign patients both with therapies and accommodation. Thus, he decided to build a sanatorium. The Stadtpark Sanatorium (inaugurated in 1906) and the Sibiu Public Bath represented a unique spa treatment unit in Transylvania until the First World War. The building of the sanatorium, constructed according to the plans of the same architect, Hocheder, is made up of two halves, one that includes the rooms for patients and the home of the doctor of the institution, and the other composed of rooms available for rent. The dining room and the reading room were located partially in the building body connecting the public bath to the sanatorium. After the opening of the sanatorium, the number of clients rose to an average of 5,000 per year, with patients coming from all corners of the country, as well as from Turkey and Germany.

An interesting fact, during the communist regime, the authorities changed the name of the Sibiu Public Bath into Neptune Public Bath, thinking about God Neptune. Well, a few years ago, trying to find the right logo for its promotion, the incumbent chairwoman consulted an architect, who suggested the swan as the institution’s symbol. What’s interesting is the fact that a swan was already drawn on the building. AGERPRES

Photo credit (c): ISABELA PAULESCU / AGERPRES STREAM