Steampunk aficionados and those looking to try something different can now enjoy a tipple at what's probably the world's first kinetic steampunk bar. Based in Transylvania, the Enigma Cafe is an impressively intricate work of interior design chock full of moving clocks, cogs, and whirring machinery.
- Located in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania – Romania's second most populous city – the Enigma Cafe took Romanian interior design company 6th Sense the better part of two years to complete. The firm has prior experience with such projects, and has previously produced another steampunk bar and a Jules Verne-style submarine pub in Romania.
The bar is meticulously detailed in copper and brass piping, with glowing tubes, wires, and moving cogs and clocks adding to the ambiance. Typewriters, gas masks, and bulbs also feature, and the few areas of wall left bare are clad in rough brick.
A large illuminated clock takes its place on the back wall, and is linked to an elevator imagined to be a time machine. Whirring machinery is installed the ceiling and walls, and a spinning globe adds to the carefully-choreographed visual chaos that would perhaps prove a bit much after one too many drinks.
Strengthening the time-travel theme, the Enigma Cafe's most creepy feature is a forlorn figure named the "time slave." Sporting a gas mask and a plasma globe instead of a brain, the slave rides a bicycle said to power the machinery.
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