The Bethlen castle is located in a beautiful park at the bottom of the citadel hill, across the street from the beautiful turn-of-the-century Administrative Palace (Prefecture). Since 1882, the castle houses the history department of the County Museum, with artifacts and displays from Antiquity, Middle Ages and up to the present. Currently the castle is undergoing restoration and the museum is being temporarily housed in the Administrative Palace.
In 1582 the captain Ferenc Geszty, in charge with the Deva Castle’s garrison, erected a house at the foot of the citadel hill. That house became the residence of Sigismund Báthory, general Giorgio Basta, Stephen Bocskay, Gabriel Báthory and Gabriel Bethlen.
Gabriel Bethlen dispose in 1621 the radical transformation of the initial house, the result being Magna Curia palace. The Bethlen Castle was a Renaissance style building, but the subsequent modifications (until the first half of the 18th century) that gave the final shape that can be seen today, added Baroque style architecture.
Since 1882, the County Museum, the Museum of Dacian and Roman Civilisation, has been housed in the palace.
Magna Curia was completely renovated in 2007. (wiki)
The castle takes its name from prince Gabriel Bethlen, who rebuilt it into a Renaissance residence in the 1600s. Hungarian governor Francisc Geszty built the castle in the 1582 as a manor house, in which throughout the history lived personalities and princes of Transylvania such as Sigismund Bathory, general Basta, Steven Bocskay, Gabriel Bathory and Gabriel Bethlen who rebuilt the manor. In the 1700s the caste was remodeled in the Baroque style, when the beautiful baroque additions were made, like the adorned balcony on the façade and the monumental staircase on the side, leading into the gardens. It is a structure on two levels, with outward rectangular projections (tower-like) at its four corners.