Nägele Palace

On the site where the palace was built, on Fő utca (Hungarian for Main Street, today's Dacians' Street), Franz (Ferenc) Hönig's Holy Trinity pharmacy (German: Zur Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit; Hungarian: A Szentháromsághoz; Romanian: La Sfânta Treime) operated since 1873, when he had obtained the right to establish a pharmacy through a contest with three participants.^[1] The pharmacy successively belonged to several pharmacists: Alexander (Sándor) Supp (1891–1893), Eduard (Ede) Feigl (1893–1894), Ernest (Ernő) Weinrich (Vida) (1894–1898) and Ignác Neumann (Németh) (1898–1905), respectively.^[2] In 1905 Antal Nägele bought the pharmacy, and in 1910 he hired Henrik Telkes to build the current building.^[3][4]

The palace is named after Aladár Kovács who bought both the building and the pharmacy from Nägele in 1917.^[2][5] Even today, a pharmacy still operates on the ground floor of the palace.^[1]

The two-story building is made in the so-called "1900s style", the Secession current.^[6] Its decorations are typical for the last and most evolved phase, the "geometric" phase, of this style.^[7] The entrance to the building is framed by two bas-reliefs representing female figures offering mortars with pharmaceutical preparations. Above the entrance rises a tower with three high gables and covered with a conical roof, on the top of which is the rod of Asclepius (but with two coiled snakes, a confusion with the caduceus common in the era).^[5]