The Catedrala Romano-Catolică, also called the Basilica Minor, is the largest Baroque Catholic cathedral in Romania. It was begun in 1752 by Bishop Pavel Forgách and completed in 1780 to designs by the Italian architects Giovanni Battista Ricca and Franz Hillebrand. The exterior is restrained — a long beige façade with twin towers and a low pediment — but the scale only becomes obvious once you are inside.
The nave runs to seventy metres, the cupola rises forty, and the interior is decorated with eighteenth-century frescoes by Bohemian and Austrian painters working in the high Baroque idiom. The bishop's throne, the choir stalls and the side altars are all original. Don't miss the smaller chapel to the right of the main altar — it contains the relics of King Ladislaus I of Hungary, who founded the medieval bishopric here in the 11th century.