Cluj-Napoca

A pre-Roman settlement called Napoca stood here, and after Trajan's conquest of Dacia in 106 the Romans built a town of the same name, made a municipium by Hadrian and later a colonia and the capital of the province of Dacia Porolissensis. The Romans left in 274, and the site had no town for most of a millennium. In the Middle Ages the Hungarian kings made it the seat of the county of Kolozs; a settlement of Transylvanian Saxons grew up, the name Castrum Clus is recorded in 1213, and on 19 August 1316 King Charles I made it a city. Matthias Corvinus, later one of Hungary's most famous kings, was born here in 1443.

After 1541 the city entered a period of economic and cultural prosperity, and in the late 16th century it earned the name "treasure city". Ferenc Dávid, born in the city, founded the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, and from 1790 to 1848 it was the seat of the Transylvanian government and diets. From 1830 it was the centre of the Hungarian national movement in Transylvania; in 1894 the authors of the Transylvanian Memorandum, which demanded rights for Romanians, were tried here as some 20,000 people demonstrated in the streets.

The city became part of Romania after 1918, returned to Hungary from 1940 to 1944, when 16,148 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and was restored to Romania in 1947. Hungarians remained the majority until the 1960s, when industrialisation brought many Romanians. In 1974 the communist government added "Napoca" to the name. Twenty-six people were killed here in the revolution of 1989. Twelve years of nationalist rule under mayor Gheorghe Funar ended in 2004, and the city has grown rapidly since.

Cluj is the unofficial capital of Transylvania and a major cultural centre. The neo-Baroque National Theatre houses both the Lucian Blaga National Theatre and the Romanian National Opera; the State Hungarian Theatre and Hungarian Opera, the Transylvania Philharmonic and the Puck puppet theatre add to a busy season. Babeș-Bolyai University, the largest in Romania, teaches in Romanian, Hungarian and German, and its students set much of the city's pace.

The city is home to the second-largest urban Hungarian community in Romania, almost 50,000 people, and the seat of the Reformed and Unitarian dioceses of Transylvania, while the Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches have cathedrals here. The Hungarian Cultural Days are held each summer.

Summer is festival season. The Transilvania International Film Festival, founded in 2002, was the first international feature film festival in Romania; Untold, the country's largest electronic music festival, fills Cluj Arena and the Central Park every August; and Electric Castle takes over the Bánffy Castle at Bonțida. The city's own bands range from the rock group Compact to Luna Amară, and its nightlife spreads from Union Square to the bars of Strada Piezișă. Football divides the city between CFR Cluj and Universitatea, which played their first derby in the Central Park in 1920.

At the 2021 census Cluj-Napoca had 286,598 inhabitants, the second-largest city in Romania, and its metropolitan area, which includes seventeen surrounding communes, has more than 400,000 people. Students and other non-residents add to the population, and since 2005 new districts such as Borhanci, Becaș and Sopor have been laid out on the edges of the city.

Much of Romania's software and IT industry is based in Cluj, and the city also holds regional offices of international firms, factories such as De'Longhi and Bosch in the industrial parks outside the city, eleven hospitals and many universities. Emil Boc, a former prime minister, has been mayor since 2012.

Most residents live in the large districts of flats built under communism, such as Mănăștur, Gheorgheni and Grigorescu, and travel by bus, trolleybus and tram. Weekends take families to the forests of Făget and Hoia and the gorge at Turda, and summer evenings to the terraces of the centre.

Cluj's cooking is Transylvanian, a mixture of Romanian and Hungarian traditions. The city's own dish is varză à la Cluj, layers of cabbage or sauerkraut, minced pork and rice, first printed in a cookbook in 1695 and often topped with sour cream. Ciorbă, the sour soup made with meat or vegetables and soured with borș, vinegar or sauerkraut juice, opens many meals, and sarmale, stuffed cabbage rolls and Romania's national dish, are popular across Transylvania.

Hungarian dishes such as goulash and chicken paprikash are part of the cooking, and kürtőskalács, the Székely chimney cake of sweet dough wound round a spit and rolled in sugar, is popular in both Hungary and Romania. Mămăligă, the cornmeal mush, comes with stews and with telemea cheese and sour cream, and papanași, a fresh-cheese dough dessert topped with sour cream and fruit preserve, are a traditional sweet.

Pălincă, the strong double-distilled fruit brandy of Transylvania, and țuică, made from plums, are the local spirits. The cafés of Museum Square, the bars of Strada Piezișă and the many restaurants of the centre, from Romanian and Hungarian cooking to international menus, reflect a young, international city.