The permanent collection of this sizeable gallery has creaky rooms featuring 18th- and 19th-century art, mostly portraits of nobles and their bewigged wives, plus landscapes and religious icons. It’s a pleasant collection, though not unmissable. The reason to visit is the stately setting within baroque Bánffy Palace, which hosted Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph I.
If you’re travelling onwards from Cluj to other Transylvanian towns, it’s worth looking out for Pericle Capidan’s paintings of Sighișoara and Elena Popea’s Bran landscapes to set the scene.
