Restoring the original

Using WACKER silicone rubber, restorers make molds of the opulent ornaments in the Arad Old Casino in order to replace damaged pieces with identical copies of the originals. The restoration work is giving back to this western Romanian city a place fondly remembered by many of its inhabitants.

As a mural painting restorer, Annamaria Baciu spent a few months in Florence restoring frescoes painted by the famous medieval artist, Giotto. Afterward, she returned home to Romania, and has spent the last four years in Arad, a city of 160,000 inhabitants located in western Romania on the Hungarian border. “The casino we’re working on at the moment is by no means a Giotto,” she says, explaining that it is a protected historical monument and is on the list of important local heritage sites. “Nevertheless, this place is more important than Giotto to the people of Arad.”

“The Old Casino used to be the most popular spot in Arad,” continued Baciu. “In summer, families sipped lemonade and beer on the terrace; in winter, there was an ice rink in front of the casino and it was also used as a venue for many weddings.”

Situated on the Mures River, the neo-Baroque Old Casino, which dates back to 1872, is surrounded by beautiful historical buildings testifying to the city’s heyday in the 19th century. Back then, during the rule of the House of Habsburg, Arad was home to Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Serbs and Jews, who whiled away their time in the casino playing roulette and cards. During the Communist era, the building housed a bar.

After the political revolution of 1989, the building became increasingly dilapidated. The tenants operating a Chinese restaurant on the upper floor for several years lacked sensitivity in their treatment of the neo-Baroque stucco ornamentation.

“The Old Casino changed owners many times. Some were good, others less so,” noted Baciu. In the end, it was sold at a public auction to an Arad-based entrepreneur, the owner of Arsat Industrie, a company manufacturing aerospace components and other goods. He wished to give back to his home town the building that occupies a special place in the memories of Arad residents – so, he commissioned Baciu to restore the historic fabric of the building. There are plans to use the building as a venue for events, with splendid areas being available for hire by both businesses and private parties.

Historical buildings are in the best of hands with Professor Baciu. She studied art history and has given lectures on restoration methods at the most important Romanian universities – in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca – for 25 years. She is hailed at home and abroad as an eminent mural painting restoration specialist. Since early 2019, her team of restorers has been removing the various layers that were added to the original Old Casino in the past 150 years. On the eastern facade, for example, there were between five and eight coats of paint – and even more of them closer to the river because the humidity is higher there, causing the paint to deteriorate faster. All kinds of different colors and materials were used on the ceiling and the interiors: orange, white and green; gypsum, concrete and cement, plastics and a host of other materials.

“None were true to the original, none of the work was professional,” says Annamaria Baciu. The past hundred years – the world wars, the economic instability of the inter-war period, 40 years of Communist rule and finally the sudden adoption of a market economy with its many new and not always suitable materials – have left their mark on the Arad casino. “We are freeing the original from an assortment of layers comprising different materials dating back to various periods and are transporting the architect’s design into our day and age,” she explains.

Typically, the neo-Baroque style features a wealth of exuberant ornamentation both inside and out. The restorers generally strive to be faithful to the principles of historic monument conservation – to retain as much of the original building fabric as possible.

Their guiding principle “primum non nocere” – first, do no harm – is similar to the Hippocratic Oath, says Baciu. “It only takes a few seconds to destroy centuries.” Carefully, the art historian strokes an ornamental sun on the wall from which parts have broken off. “Many of the ornaments are damaged,” she says. Some 20 percent of the fabric must be replaced. This is where WACKER comes into play.