In Unirii Square at no. 10 stands one of the largest buildings in this area: Josika Palace. The people of Cluj also call this building “the house with legs”, due to the four Doric columns on which the balcony located on the first floor rests. There is a superstition which says that the student who passes under the “feet” of the balcony in the morning will receive a bad grade that day.
On the site of the current building, in the 16th century, there was a house – the residence of the Transylvanian princes who visited Cluj, and then, in the 18th century, the building became the property of Josika Barons. The governor of Transylvania, Josika Janos, started the construction of the current building which had only one floor. In the 19th century, another floor was added, reaching its current form. This neoclassical style building had several uses over time: casino, the headquarters of the Royal Court in Cluj or even the library of the medicine faculty.
On the building’s frontispiece appears the inscription MDCCCXXVIII (1828), the year of the building’ s renovation.