Our Foundation has been working on the restoration and revitalisation of Bánffy Castle, Bonțida, since 2000, during which several buildings of the ensemble have been partially renovated. Last year, we launched two large-scale restoration projects with the goal of saving and using the riding school as an educational workshop and of continuing the restoration works on the stables building. In 2024, after finalising its structural reinforcement, the riding school was fully renovated and furnished, and work began on the stables as well

We have been organising Built Heritage Conservation Training Programmes at Bánffy Castle, Bonțida, for 23 years now, with the aim of addressing the shortage of skilled and qualified workers in the field of historic building conservation. So far, the programme has welcomed more than 3000 participants from 32 countries.

The two-week interdisciplinary camps aim to preserve, utilise, and pass on traditional building craft skills. This year, we held a total of three Built Heritage Conservation Training Programmes at Bánffy Castle, Bonțida: the first one in April, while the second and third ones in August.

The first camp, held in the spring, was attended by skilled construction workers intending to work in the field of historic building conservation. Thus, emphasis was put mainly on practical training, including vault restoration. The activities were led by four experienced practical trainers.

The August camps catered mainly to university students (architects, civil engineers, landscape architects, archaeologists, art historians etc.) and professionals from the construction industry, but we welcomed people from other fields as well. These camps offered practical training in four workshops: masonry, stonemasonry, joinery and decorative rendering.

In the autumn, we have launched the training’s website, where future participants can read useful information about the programme and our workshops, follow our calls and pre-register for future camps, and former participants can travel back in time with the help of the photo archive and can access the training materials.

We have been running our Rimetea Heritage Conservation Project since 1996, thanks to which the little village of Rimetea has developed into one of the architectural jewels of Transylvania and a prime destination for cultural tourism.

This autumn, we launched a new promotion of our Training and Professional Development Programme in Built Heritage Conservation and Rehabilitation (formerly known as Postgraduate Studies on Historic Building Conservation), which we have been organising in cooperation with the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, since 1998 and which currently has 35 students. The next enrolment period for the two-year postgraduate course will take place in 2026.

This year, Bánffy Castle, Bonțida, hosted an Open Day in the spring and the Bánffy Day in the autumn, providing guided tours in Hungarian and Romanian, along with children’s programmes and cultural activities.

For the third year in a row, we organised a summer camp for children between the ages of 7 and 12, aiming to raise their awareness about the importance of preserving our built heritage. The June camp titled Heritage under the Magnifying Glass revolved around skill-building activities such as horseback riding, playful mathematics, nature walks, workshops for exploring the natural world, stop-motion animation, Renaissance dance, archery and fencing. These activities allowed children to deepen their knowledge of the castle’s history while freely enjoying the historical environment.

In April and in October, we organised several Heritage Days for over 280 schoolchildren, employing non-formal educational methods to introduce them to cultural heritage. Through interactive guided tours, salon culture workshops, treasure hunts and Renaissance dance lessons, the children not only learned about life in the castle but also understood the significance of preserving and utilising historic buildings.

This year, we have implemented three new thematic training workshops:

1. in March, we invited university students and young professionals who wished to learn more about tour guiding and the presentation of built heritage to our workshop titled (Built) Heritage: How Can it Become a Unique Experience. Some of the topics discussed at the workshop were included in an online publication, which is available on our website in Romanian and Hungarian.
2. in May, we organised a training workshop for teachers and organisers of children’s activities on the topic of heritage in non-formal education, titled Built and Natural Heritage in Non-formal Education Using STEAM Methods. The workshop was completed with an online pedagogical toolkit on the same subject, available for download from our website in Romanian and Hungarian.
3. in November, we held a three-day local debate titled Workshop EcoArt – Interdisciplinary, Participatory, Innovative Dialogue, in the framework of our CO-Vision project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The workshop results, i.e. artworks on the topic of the connection of art and natural heritage, can be viewed here.

In October, we published the bilingual (Romanian and Hungarian) “Bánffy Castle in Bonțida during the Communist Regime in Romania”, which follows the castle’s fate during the decades of communist repression based on the correspondence between the Cluj and Gherla People’s Councils and the Directorate of Historical Monuments. The publication was presented on 24 October at the House of Religious Freedom in Cluj-Napoca, accompanied by a round table discussion with the participation of the author, art historian Ioana Rus-Cacovean, architect Virgil Pop, secretary of the Western Transylvania Zonal Commission for Historical Monuments, and Zsolt Fazekas, pastor of the Reformed Church of Bonțida from 1991-1996. The discussion was moderated by Csilla Hegedüs, president of the Transylvania Trust Foundation, which is committed to saving and restoring the castle. In December we finalised the publication’s trilingual (Romanian, Hungarian, English) version as well, with the title “The Fate of the Bánffy Castle in Bonțida, during the Communist Regime in Romania”.

This year we successfully closed our SOS Heritage project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and implemented by an international partnership (Austria, Italy, Romania and Serbia). As part of the project, we digitised the extant pieces of the Baroque sculpture gallery representing mythological figures that once adorned the central axis of the cour d’honneur and the main building of Bánffy Castle, Bonțida, and created the permanent digital exhibition titled The Lost Statues of Bánffy Castle, Bonțida, which was set up in the former chapel, reorganised this year to host the Lost&Found Lapidarium exhibition.

Running our Foundation this year was supported by the Bethlen Gábor Fund in Hungary.