Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca, or simply Cluj, is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest, Budapest and Belgrade. Located in the Someșul Mic river valley, the city is considered the unofficial capital of the historical province of Transylvania. For some decades prior to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, it was the official capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania.
, 286,598 inhabitants live in the city. The Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area had a population of 411,379 people, while the population of the peri-urban area is approximately 420,000. According to a 2007 estimate, the city hosted an average population of over 20,000 students and other non-residents each year from 2004 to 2007. The city spreads out from St. Michael's Church in Unirii Square, built in the 14th century and named after the Archangel Michael, Cluj's patron saint. The municipality covers an area of.
Cluj experienced a decade of decline during the 1990s, its international reputation suffering from the policies of its mayor at the time, Gheorghe Funar. In the early 21st century, the city is one of the most important academic, cultural, industrial and business centres in Romania. Among other institutions, it hosts the country's largest university, Babeș-Bolyai University, with its botanical garden, nationally renowned cultural institutions such as the National Theatre and Opera, as well as the largest Romanian-owned commercial bank. Cluj-Napoca held the titles of European Youth Capital in 2015, and European City of Sport in 2018. In 2021, the city joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and was named a UNESCO City of Film.
Etymology
Napoca
On the site of the city was a pre-Roman settlement named Napoca. After the AD 106 Roman conquest of the area, the place was known as Municipium Aelium Hadrianum Napoca. Possible etymologies for Napoca or Napuca include the names of some Dacian tribes such as the Naparis or Napaei, the Greek term napos, meaning "timbered valley" or the Indo-European root *snā-p-, "to flow, to swim, damp".Cluj
The first written mention of the city's current name – as a Royal Borough – was in 1213 under the Medieval Latin name Castrum Clus. Despite the fact that Clus as a county name was recorded in the 1173 document Thomas comes Clusiensis, it is believed that the county's designation derives from the name of the castrum, which might have existed prior to its first mention in 1213, and not vice versa. With respect to the name of this camp, there are several hypotheses about its origin. It may represent a derivation from the Latin term clausa – clusa, meaning "closed place", "strait", "ravine". Similar meanings are attributed to the Slavic term kluč, meaning "a key" and the German Klause – Kluse. The Latin and Slavic names have been attributed to the valley that narrows or closes between hills just to the west of Cluj-Mănăștur. An alternative proposal relates the name of the city to its first magistrate, Miklus – Miklós / Kolos.The Hungarian form Kolozsvár, first recorded in 1246 as Kulusuar, underwent various phonetic changes over the years ; the variant Koloswar first appears in a document from 1332. Its Saxon name Clusenburg/''Clusenbvrg appeared in 1348, but from 1408 the form Clausenburg was used. The Romanian name of the city used to be spelled alternately as Cluj or Cluș, the latter being the case in Mihai Eminescu's Poesis.
Other historical names for the city, all related to or derived from "Cluj" in different languages, include Latin Claudiopolis, Italian Clausemburgo, Turkish Kaloşvar and Yiddish קלויזנבורג Kloyznburg or קלאזין Klazin''.
Current official name
Napoca, the pre-Roman and Roman name of ancient settlements in the area of the modern city, was added to the historical and modern name of Cluj during Nicolae Ceaușescu's national-communist dictatorship as part of his myth-making efforts. This happened in 1974, when the communist authorities made this nationalist gesture with the goal of emphasising the city's pre-Roman roots. The full name of "Cluj-Napoca" is rarely used outside of official contexts.Nickname
The nickname "treasure city" was acquired in the late 16th century, and refers to the wealth amassed by residents, including in the precious metals trade. The phrase is orașul comoară in Romanian, given in Hungarian as kincses város.History
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire conquered Dacia in AD 101 and 106, during the rule of Trajan, and the Roman settlement Napoca, established about 106, is first recorded on a milestone discovered in 1758 in the vicinity of the city. Trajan's successor Hadrian granted Napoca the status of municipium as municipium Aelium Hadrianum Napocenses. Later, in the second century AD, the city gained the status of a colonia as Colonia Aurelia Napoca. Napoca became a provincial capital of Dacia Porolissensis and thus the seat of a procurator. The colonia was evacuated in 274 by the Romans. There are no references to urban settlement on the site for the better part of a millennium thereafter.Middle Ages
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, two groups of buildings existed on the current site of the city: the wooden fortress at Cluj-Mănăștur and the civilian settlement developed around the current Piața Muzeului in the city centre. Although the precise date of the conquest of Transylvania by the Hungarians is not known, the earliest Hungarian artifacts found in the region are dated to the first half of the tenth century. In any case, after that time, the city became part of the Kingdom of Hungary. King Stephen I made the city the seat of the castle county of Kolozs, and King Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary founded the abbey of Cluj-Mănăștur, destroyed during the Tatar invasions in 1241 and 1285. As for the civilian colony, a castle and a village were built to the northwest of the ancient Napoca no later than the late 12th century. This new village was settled by large groups of Transylvanian Saxons, encouraged during the reign of Crown Prince Stephen, Duke of Transylvania. The first reliable mention of the settlement dates from 1275, in a document of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary, when the village was granted to the Bishop of Transylvania. On 19 August 1316, during the rule of the new king, Charles I of Hungary, Cluj was granted the status of a city, as a reward for the Saxons' contribution to the defeat of the rebellious Transylvanian voivode, Ladislaus Kán.The couple buried together and known as the Lovers of Cluj-Napoca are believed to have lived between 1450 and 1550.
Many craft guilds were established in the second half of the 13th century, and a patrician stratum based in commerce and craft production displaced the older landed elite in the town's leadership. Through the privilege granted by Sigismund of Luxembourg in 1405, the city opted out from the jurisdiction of voivodes, vice-voivodes and royal judges, and obtained the right to elect a twelve-member jury every year. In 1488, King Matthias Corvinus ordered that the centumvirate—the city council, consisting of one hundred men—be half composed from the homines bone conditiones, with craftsmen supplying the other half; together they would elect the chief judge and the jury. Meanwhile, an agreement was reached providing that half of the representatives on this city council were to be drawn from the Hungarian, half from the Saxon population, and that judicial offices were to be held on a rotating basis. In 1541, Kolozsvár became part of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom after the Ottoman Turks occupied the central part of the Kingdom of Hungary; a period of economic and cultural prosperity followed. Although Alba Iulia served as a political capital for the princes of Transylvania, Cluj enjoyed the support of the princes to a greater extent, thus establishing connections with the most important centres of Eastern Europe at that time, along with Košice, Kraków, Prague and Vienna.
16th–18th centuries
In terms of religion, Protestant ideas first appeared in the middle of the 16th century. During Gáspár Heltai's service as preacher, Lutheranism grew in importance, as did the Swiss doctrine of Calvinism. By 1571, the Turda Diet had adopted a more radical religion, Ferenc Dávid's Unitarianism, characterised by the free interpretation of the Bible and denial of the dogma of the Trinity. Stephen Báthory founded a Catholic Jesuit academy in the city in order to promote an anti-Reform movement; however, it did not have much success. For a year, in 1600–1601, Cluj became part of the personal union of Michael the Brave. Under the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, it became part of the Habsburg monarchy.In the 17th century, Cluj suffered from great calamities, suffering from epidemics of the plague and devastating fires. The end of this century brought the end of Turkish sovereignty, but found the city bereft of much of its wealth, municipal freedom, cultural centrality, political significance and even population. It gradually regained its important position within Transylvania as the headquarters of the Gubernium and the Diets between 1719 and 1732, and again from 1790 until the revolution of 1848, when the Gubernium moved to Nagyszeben. In 1791, a group of Romanian intellectuals drew up a petition, known as Supplex Libellus Valachorum, which was sent to the Emperor in Vienna. The petition demanded the equality of the Romanian nation in Transylvania in respect to the other nations governed by the Unio Trium Nationum, but it was rejected by the Diet of Cluj.