Carpathian crescent Romania still calls a cultural heartland
Transylvania, a historical region of central Romania, meets the Carpathians east and south and the Apuseni west, with broader definitions adding western counties. Cluj-Napoca is Romania’s second city; Brașov, Sibiu, and peers keep medieval townscapes inside a multi-ethnic landscape of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and others.
A Hungarian Latin charter of 1078 first names the region ultra silvam, beyond the forest, a translation of Hungarian Erdő-elve, later Erdély, which Romanian borrowed as Ardeal. German speakers instead say Siebenbürgen, seven castles, after the Saxon towns, and Croatian, Polish, Bulgarian and Yiddish names echo that count. World Heritage listings here cover Saxon villages ringed around fortified churches, Sighișoara's old centre, hilltop Dacian strongholds and the gold-mining country of Roșia Montană.
The Scythian-linked Agathyrsi came first, then Celtic La Tène culture from the fourth century BC, until Dacian tribes united under Burebista. Trajan's bloody wars toppled King Decebalus in 106 and brought Latin colonists to mine the land, but Aurelian pulled the legions south of the Danube in 275. Goths, Huns, Gepids under Ardaric from 455, Avars with Slavic subjects and finally the First Bulgarian Empire followed.
Hungarian tribes arrived late in the ninth century, and whether Romanians lived there continuously remains hotly argued. Stephen I marched against his uncle Gyula III and annexed the region in 1002, after which royal voivodes governed it until the defeat at Mohács in 1526. The Treaty of Speyer created a principality in 1570, mostly led by Calvinist Hungarian princes and paying tribute to the Ottomans while also answering to the Habsburgs, who took full control in 1690.
Reunited with Hungary in 1867, Transylvania joined Romania after a Romanian assembly proclaimed union on 1 December 1918, confirmed at Trianon in 1920; Hungary regained the north from 1940 until the war's end. The vampire image stems from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel and from Saxon pamphlets that painted Vlad III, whose impalements terrorised Saxon traders, as a blood drinker.
Source: Transylvania
