The Timișoara Palace Of Culture (Palatul Culturii din Timișoara), also known as the National Theater or Opera House is a building in Timișoara hosting several cultural institutions: the Romanian National Opera, the Mihai Eminescu National Theater, the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theater, and the German State Theater.
The building was designed by Ferdinand Fellner and constructed between 1872 and 1875. The inauguration took place on September 22, 1875. The style of architecture can be described as historic eclecticism, with classicist and neo-Baroque elements, which is also known as Italian Renaissance.
On April 30, 1880, a fire broke out which destroyed the auditorium, after which the building was renovated and reopened on December 12, 1882. Another large renovation took place in 1890 to modernize the theater building. However, the building was largely destroyed again during a fire that broke out on October 31, 1920, and took several days to extinguish. Due to the aftermath of World War I, the restoration only started in 1923 and took until 1928, when the theater was reopened with the name “Communal Theater”. During this renovation the capacity of the theater was also enlarged from the initial 900 seats to 982 by annexing 23 rooms from the hotel that was located inside the same building.
During the 1930s the building offered temporary housing to the National Museum of Banat, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Banat–Crișana Social Institute, and the name was changed to Palace of Culture.
