Băile Herculane Spa
The two-millennium history of the Băile Herculane spas begins in 153 CE, when it was first mentioned in historical records.
Ana-Maria Cononovici and Daniel Onea, 10.12.2024, 14:00
The two-millennium history of the Băile Herculane spas begins in 153 CE, when it was first mentioned in historical records. In the modern era, the Emperor of Austria described Băile Herculane as “the most beautiful resort on the continent”, while Empress Elizabeth mentioned the spa in her diary. Wishing to keep the history of the place alive, Iacob Sârbu, a collector from Băile Herculane, gathered dozens of objects that reconstruct the former glory of the region. He exhibited them at the Romanian Travel Fair, where we caught up with him and asked him to tell us his story:
“I first started collecting when I was a small child, during my holidays spent at my mother’s grandfather in Reșita and who was a keen collector. I learned a lot from him. The Herculane collection, which is my present subject, has been my hobby for about 8 years, and started at a difficult time in my life. Putting together this collection helped me find my peace and channel my energies. While in the beginning I only showed the collection to only a few friends, things changed when I met two remarkable people, Ioan Traia, the president of the association of rural media journalists in Banat and Gheorghe Rancu Bodrog, a former teacher and owner of a museum in Şopotul Vechi, in the Almaju area, in Caraș-Severin county. The two them helped bring out the best in me and it is thanks to them that I started showing everyone what I have collected. It is also thanks to them that I agreed to take part in many cultural events in Banat and in the Serbian Banat, and in February this year, at the invitation of the County Council, I agreed to take part in this fair. I want to show parts of my collection, and these are in fact fragments of local history.”
Like any passionate collector, Iacob Sârbu loves all of his objects in equal measure:
“All the objects in my collection are important to me. It’s impossible to differentiate between them. An inexpensive postcard from the interwar or communist period is just as valuable to me as a rare postcard or a lithograph that costs several hundred euros. There is no difference. However, there is one object that is very dear to me, a replica of the statue of Empress Elizabeth from Herculane. The statue did exist once, but it no longer does, no one knows where it is, whether it broke or was thrown away. A friend recreated this replica based on old photos. I insisted that he made it as close to the old one as possible, so that I can present both the replica of Sissi’s statue from Caransebeș, which I got from Gheorghe Rancu, and this replica from Herculane. In time, ever since I started work on this collection, I have come to know a lot of people who can help me get hold of things like books, objects, photographs, postcards, and which I can find on eBay or Delcampe.”
Some of the objects exhibited by our interlocutor come all the way from Argentina, in the form of postcards sent from Herculane and dating from the spa’s heyday. Iacob Sârbu described to us some of the more special postcards from his collection, starting with the oldest one, dated July 7, 1894:
“This postcard is vertical. In the top part of the postcard there is an image of the Ghizel Park, as it was called back then, today the Central Park, flanked by the two hotels, which at that time during the imperial period, were called Franz Joseph and Rudolph. Each postcard has a story, each has something special. For example it is printed on silk and the silk is glued to cardboard. This postcard is from 1899, if you put a light source behind it, all the windows of the buildings appear lit up. The same type of postcards can be found for other places, such as Vatra Dornei, Lipova, Buziaș and Băile Felix. This one here makes fun of how busy the resort is and this one shows a man who comes with a lot of money to Herculane and goes home bankrupt.”
Vertical panoramic postcards, 54 cm long, kept in a frame by those who received them, an advertisement page from the Curierul Banatului newspaper, dated 31st December 1934, chromolithographs with Băile Herculane from 1840, 1842 and 1860 are also part of the collection, which will soon also be available to see online.
