Aro Palace plans selling the Brasov Fortress

Aro Palace, owner of Brasov Fortress, the city’s flagship (Cetatea Brasovului) plans to sell it for 3.5 to 4 million Euro and runs negotiations with Brasov mayorship, according to Mediafax newswire.

2014-07-23 12:44:07

If the company will fail negotiating with the city hall, the representatives said that they will organize an auction this fall. According to Mihai Fercala, general manager of investment entity SIF Transilvania, the owner of Aro Palace hotel, Brasov Fortress is in a poor shape and the rehabilitation would cost the company around 2.4 to 3 million. Since Aro Palace is not permitted to cash in the revenues from the museum, the only revenue source would be the restaurant which is no longer profitable. "For Aro Palace, this site only produces costs with electricity, gas and salaries, since the touristic traffic in the area drastically diminished in the last years," Fercala said for Mediafax newswire.

In order to sell it, Aro Palace company has to firstly address to the Ministry of Culture and to the local county council, but with no positive answer regarding a potential buying intention. Only the city hall expressed the intention of running negotiations in this respect, the Aro Palace representative said.

Strategically overlooking the town and the plains to North, the Citadel (Brasov Fortress) is part of Brasov′s outer fortification system. At first some wooden protective walls was erected here, later, in 1529, destroyed by Petru Rares. On the same spot they built a stone citadel called Cetatuia (1553), destroyed by fire in 1618 and re-built in 1625. For protective purposes the inhabitants added to the initial building four massive stone bastions in 1630.