RESIDENCES VLADIMIR HERŢA

In the 1830s, a house was built by the architect O. Gasket, along the main street then called Alexandrovskaya. In 1845, this house was bought by the owner Iorgu Balș who gave it to an orphanage which then took his name. In 1903, it changed ownership again, a nobleman named Vladimir Herța demolished it in 1905, to build a magnificent house typical of the bourgeois architecture of the beginning of the century. The architect would be Henrik Lonsky. In line with the trends of this period, the architecture is eclectic with strong Viennese Baroque predominance. Here again, there is a symmetrical composition of the facade aligned with the street; on the other hand, the interior spatial organization is asymmetrical. The entrance is located on the right side of the courtyard. The main façade is profusely decorated with bas-reliefs sculpted on the theme of the plant world. Inside, the walls are covered with frescoes and the ceilings are covered with golden mouldings. This beautiful building houses the National Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1939 by the sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală and the painter Auguste Baillayre. Restorations have been carried out over several years. In Soviet times, the Art Museum of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was located for a while in this building, before being transferred not far away, to the former girls' gymnasium founded by Princess Natalia Dadiani and built by Alexandru Bernardazzi.