Bohus Castle in Arad

Siria is a place in Romania known, among other things, for being home to Buhus Castle.

Christine Leșcu, 04.06.2016, 14:12

Siria is a
locality in western Romania, close to the town of Arad. Its has its cultural
importance, just like many other such localities in Banat County. Siria came to
be known mainly due to the great Romanian 19th century prose writer
Ioan Slavici, who was born there in the year of the revolution, 1848. Today
Siria boasts a memorial museum dedicated to Ioan Slavici, which is not in the
house Slavici was born in, but in another building, which in turn is important
to the history and culture of the place, the Buhus Castle; its history begins
with the Buhus family of Slovak origin being emblazoned by the House of
Hapsburg. Together with the rank, the family was offered the Siria estate. It
was on that estate that the Buhus Family would build three residential
buildings, the most important of them being erected between 1824 and 1838 by
Janos Bohus, the most distinguished member of his family.

Anca Majaru is an
architect specializing in heritage buildings. She studied the history of the
Bohus Castle and is now giving us details on that.

Janos Bohus erected his building in an austere neo-classical style, typical of
both the time and the area where it was built. Initially, the Bohus residence
was thought out as a building with a partial basement and ground floor, with
four wings of the building laid out around an inner courtyard. The edifice was
designed both for dwelling areas, drawing rooms or apartments to live in, and
for adjacent areas which served the main rooms and all sorts of outhouses. The
main building, the dwelling proper, had a U-shaped plan, with the short side
facing the street. The reception rooms could be found here, and the status of
the body facing the street was made known through the main entrance area which
had a classical temple pediment with Doric columns. Outback towards the
courtyard there were the outhouses serving the household. The changes the
building underwent in time, targeted those very outhouses that were closing the
rectangular area. Unfortunately, the buildings rapidly fell prey to a decaying
process after World War Two and the decision was eventually taken that the
building’s northeastern corner be brought down.

Whereas the
style of the building itself was classical, austere and in line with the
standards of that time, its owners on the other hand were less conventional,
says architect Anca Majaru:

Janos
Bohus and Antonia Szogeny Bohus are the best known members of this family. They
took active part in the 1848-1849 Revolution in Transylvania. Ironically, it
was precisely in their castle that the Hungarian troops signed their surrender,
after the battle of Seleus-Siria, to the Russian forces deployed to support the
Austrian army. Of equal importance was the involvement of Baroness Bohus in the
local culture and the cultural life of the Hungarian Kingdom. She was known as
a feminist involved in the education and improvement of the locals’ living
standards. The couple’s son, Laszlo Bohus, also became a major figure in the
local political circle, and gained popularity after he had opened a number of
cultural institutions in Arad.

A talented
prose writer, journalist, political activist, a friend of Romanian literature
giants Mihai Eminescu and Ion Luca Caragiale, Ioan Slavici lived both in
Transylvania, and in Bucharest, prior to the Union of 1918. The house where he
lived in Bucharest no longer exists, all we know today is its location, as it
happened with his native home in the village of Siria as well. For this reason,
in the early 1960s the Bohus Castle was seen as the ideal place to host a
Slavici museum. By that time, there were no survivors of the Bohus family, as
Anca Majaru told us:

With
Laszlo Bohus’ death, the male lineage of the family ended. Later, with the
historical changes in the early 20th Century, the Siria Estate was
gradually abandoned by the heirs. After World War Two, the castle came under
public administration, and in the 1960s the authorities decided a memorial
museum should be laid out there for a great Romanian personality born in Siria,
prose writer Ioan Slavici. Today, the castle hosts both a collection devoted to
the writer, and one devoted to composer Emil Montia. The exhibition featuring
Ioan Slavici includes items related to his childhood, his school years in
Siria, then his education in Arad, Budapest and Vienna, as well as his desk,
part of the furniture from his home in Bucharest, manuscripts and copies of his
works.

At present
the Bohus Castle is well preserved and the park on the estate has recently been
restored.