Timișoara. Love at First Sight is a declaration of love at first sight. A perpetual love that is renewed every day. Timișoara is to be loved at first glance, and the closer you look, the more there is to love.
Timișoara is a city of beginnings, which will always remain “first” in its achievements. A city where the past and present live in harmony.
Because you love what you know, let’s discover the secrets of Timișoara, get to know its essence, and celebrate its uniqueness.
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It’s time for Timișoara!
First city in the country with a beer factory
After the liberation of the Timișoara citadel from Ottoman occupation in 1716, the first beer factory in present-day Romania was established. The monopoly of production was granted to the Kepesch brothers from Bratislava, with the condition that they would provide not only beer but also drinking water – in practice, the water filtration system for beer also filtered water for the city.
It is important to make a distinction between manufactures and beer factories. In manufactures, everything was done manually, whereas beer factories had a mechanized process, initially using steam and later electricity. Therefore, although beer was produced in the country since the medieval period, the first documented brewery in Romania is the one in Timișoara.
It should be noted that in the daily ration of soldiers stationed in the city after the Peace of Passarowitz (1718), a certain amount of beer was included. Therefore, the decision to establish a brewery was also motivated by the need to support the army’s consumption.
Since its establishment, the brewery has changed its location three times. The first location was near the current Emanuil Ungureanu high school, and the second near the current UMFT. In 1879, the brewery was saved from bankruptcy by the First Storage House in Timișoara, and in 1883 it was bought and retooled by the Budapest-based company Deutsch Ignaz & Son.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Timișoara brewery was the largest in Romania, also becoming the supplier to the Royal House. At that time, beer was exported to Italy, Germany, and even countries in South America.
The First City Free from Communism in Romania
On December 15, 1989, in front of the Reformed Church in Timișoara and the parish house of Pastor László Tőkés, who was to be evacuated by authorities, 20-30 believers gathered. Passers-by joined the curious, and by 9:00 p.m., over 1000 people had gathered in front of the house, peacefully demonstrating with lit candles in their hands.
Following promises made by the mayor, communicated to the pastor and the crowd, the people dispersed.
The traces of the bullets fired against the demonstrators can still be seen on the buildings in Victory Square. Today, the city has an urban regulation to preserve the historical traces of the December 1989 Revolution.
First European city with fully electrically illuminated streets
The first machine for welding railway and tram rails
In 1938, Professor Corneliu Mikloși invented the machine for welding railway and tram rails, a premiere not only at the European but also at the global level. His invention, called Taurus, revolutionized public transportation and opened up new avenues in the railway industry.
It replaced the aluminothermic welding process of rails with electric welding, through intermediate melting pressure. The Taurus machine was mounted on a motorized wagon and traveled on the ground, where it welded rail sections, aided by the crane that lowered it from the wagon. The invention ensured end-to-end rail welding, allowing for continuous railways without joints.
From 1939 to 1943, Mikloși tested this invention and, following favorable results, proceeded to weld the first railway line in the country at the Fabric train station. 400 meters were welded, whose impeccable quality made them a model for other welding works in the country and abroad.
By 1965, 4,000 km of rail had been welded in Romania. Corneliu Mikloși’s invention was patented in Romania and Switzerland and made available to the German Democratic Republic and China, which requested documentation on the installation to use it.
First city with an ambulance station in Romania and Hungary
The first rescue station in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was established in Vienna in 1884. Only 2 years later, in 1886, the foundations of the “Salvarea” Society were laid in Timișoara, thus becoming the first city in Romania and Hungary with an emergency medical assistance service. It was only after 20 years that a similar society was established in Bucharest.
One year after its establishment, the ambulance station in Timișoara had 3 boats and several stretchers used for patient transport. In 1890, the “Salvarea” Society acquired 3 carriages and established a central headquarters in the Cetate neighborhood, on Franz Josef Street, where it had a telephone post. In 1913, the Timișoara city hall donated two ambulance cars to “Salvarea.”
Initially, volunteers from the association were requested annually for 120-150 cases, but the number of incidents increased exponentially until World War I, reaching 5,000 cases per year. A few years after its establishment, the presence of the Society was mandatory at events with large crowds, as well as in public places with a high flow of people.
The “Salvarea” Society developed considerably in the interwar period under the leadership of President Eduard Prochaska, the owner of the largest mills in Timișoara and Banat. Under his guidance, ambulance cars were purchased, and with the support of the City Hall, a dedicated building for the Society was constructed on Milano Street, number 1, inaugurated on September 8, 1936.
First concert outside Vienna by Johann Strauss II
In 1847, Johann Strauss II performed his first concert outside Vienna at the Beer Factory in Timișoara. The composer of the famous waltz “The Blue Danube” had become more famous than his father, being one of the most appreciated composers of waltzes at that time.
The concert was so successful that the people of Timișoara declared Strauss the “king of waltz.” Together with his orchestra, Johann Strauss II would return to Timișoara on another tour.
His musical contribution in dance genres such as the mazurka, polka, and, of course, the waltz, is immeasurable. He was a prolific composer, with over 500 dance compositions, in addition to everything he composed in other genres (operetta, ballet).
First European city with three state theaters in three different languages
In 1953, Timișoara became the only European city with three state theaters by establishing the German State Theater and the Hungarian section, which would later become an independent institution. This premiere reflects the multicultural spirit that has always defined the city, being one of its strong points.
This cultural and artistic diversity, alongside all the other merits of the city, is one of the reasons why Timișoara became the European Capital of Culture in 2023.
The beginnings of theater in this city date back to 1753 when a troupe of itinerant actors was officially allowed to perform plays in German. Over time, things evolved, and in 1758, theater was being played in the building of the then town hall, and in 1875, the foundations of the first independent theater, the “Franz Joseph” theater, were laid in the Palace of Culture today.
First social project involving the community in solving social problems in Romania
On October 28, 2000, the building intended for the Faenza House Association was completed, designed to serve as a recovery center for children with autism residing in Timișoara.
On August 6, 2001, activities began within the Faenza House Association, benefiting 15 children with autism spectrum disorder, aged between 3 and 15 years. The day center was created by the Timișoara Municipality in partnership with the Faenza Municipality.
From this moment on, the Faenza House Association becomes a unique public-private project in the country, being a pilot center for the recovery of children with autism. The association is a non-governmental organization accredited as a provider of “day center” type services. Its aim is to improve the living conditions and adaptability of children with autism spectrum disorder.
The Timișoara Municipality is the only municipality in the country that has assumed a specialized service, created in partnership with the community. The services provided by the association are free and include: diagnosis and evaluation, individualized enablement programs, sensory-motor and instrumental training, physiotherapy, behavioral therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy, art therapy, relaxation and recreation, pediatric psychiatric monitoring, family counseling, bus transportation, and meal service.
Starting from 2010, with legislative changes and due to the large number of service requests, the number of children enrolled in the association’s programs has increased from 15 to a minimum of 70 per month. For this reason, in 2015, with the support of the Timișoara Municipality, another building was constructed in the institution’s courtyard.
The first alphanumeric Romanian computer
MECIPT-1, or the Electronic Computing Machine of the Timișoara Polytechnic Institute, was created in 1961 and is the first computer built in a university environment in Romania.
The MECIPT-1 computer was built by the mathematician Iosif Kaufmann and his cousin, the engineer Wilhelm Lowenfeld, at the Faculty of Electronics in Timișoara. After the computer was completed, a Computing Center was established at the Polytechnic in Timișoara, and Vasile Baltac was the first engineer hired, along with the mathematician Dan Farcaș.
The MECIPT-1 computer is the first calculator with which a translation from English to Romanian was performed, under the coordination of academician Grigore Moisil. Due to the very small memory of the computer, which allowed only a dictionary of 60-70 words, the translated text was quite short:
“You explain the development of science and we help describe the examples,” translated as “Dumneavoastră explicați dezvoltarea științei și noi ajutăm la descrierea exemplelor.”
MECIPT-1 represents an important step in the history of computing technology in Romania. The computer allowed many generations of students and professors to understand how an electronic computer works and to learn programming, through the establishment of the first computer specialization department in Romania.
In 1966, just 5 years after the creation of the MECIPT-1 computer, the first class of engineers specialized in electronic computers graduated from the Polytechnic in Timișoara.
The first city in Romania to use ether as an anesthetic
On February 5, 1847, the first surgery using diethyl ether (sulfuric ether) as an anesthetic took place in what is now our country. This event is all the more important as it occurred only 112 days after the global premiere of this procedure in America. The introduction of ether into surgical procedures meant painless surgeries.
The surgery was performed by surgeons Dr. Joseph Siesh and Dr. Mathias Musil at the Military Hospital in Timișoara. The patient, a soldier named Nicolae Muntean, was anesthetized with ether for a thigh amputation. An ether inhalation apparatus, built by military doctors following the American model, was used for anesthesia, the sketches of which had already appeared in newspapers.
From Timișoara, this method of anesthesia quickly spread throughout the country. Today, there are several types of anesthesia—local, regional, general, and sedation—that are used depending on the type of surgery, its duration, and the patient’s condition.