Oradea

Oradea's story begins with its church. King Ladislaus I of Hungary founded a bishopric here in the 11th century, and the king himself was buried in the city. A fortress was first recorded in 1241, during the Mongol invasion — the Italian churchman Rogerius, archdeacon of Várad, described the devastation in his Carmen miserabile — and in the later Middle Ages statues of Hungary's royal saints stood in the town, including an equestrian statue of St Ladislaus of 1390, among the first of its kind in Europe. In 1538 the Peace of Várad, concluded here, saw two rival kings of Hungary recognise each other.

After the Ottoman conquest of Hungary the city was fought over by Transylvania, the Ottomans and the Habsburgs. An Ottoman army took it in 1660 and made it the capital of a province; Habsburg forces retook it in 1692 after a 14-month siege. What followed was a golden age: from 1752 the Baroque cathedral, the bishop's palace, the Moon Church and later the theatre rose, and by the late 19th century, with a large and prosperous Jewish community, writers called Nagyvárad "Paris on the River Pece". Before 1914 its architects added Art Nouveau palaces influenced by Ödön Lechner and the Vienna Secession.

The city passed under Romanian control in 1919, and the Treaty of Trianon assigned it to Romania in 1920, when over 90 per cent of its people were Hungarian. The Second Vienna Award returned it to Hungary in 1940. In 1944 the Hungarian authorities forced the Jews of Oradea into a ghetto and deported some 25,000 to Auschwitz, among them the 13-year-old diarist Eva Heyman. Soviet troops captured the city in October 1944 and Romanian administration returned in 1945. In the 21st century its restored centre and Art Nouveau architecture have earned it the nickname 'Little Paris'.

Oradea's identity is built on mixture. Romanians form the majority, but Hungarian is spoken on the street and printed on the signs, and the city has long been a centre of Hungarian letters: the poet Endre Ady worked here as a young journalist and has a museum, and the playwright Ede Szigligeti was born here. Around a hundred religious buildings serve Orthodox, Roman and Greek Catholic, Reformed and Baptist congregations — Emanuel is described as the largest Baptist church in Eastern Europe — and three synagogues survive, one still in use.

Architecture is the city's calling card. Oradea belongs to the Réseau Art Nouveau Network and the Art Nouveau European Route, and the restored facades of Republicii Street, the Black Eagle Palace and the Darvas-La Roche House are what most visitors come to see, alongside the Baroque ensemble around the cathedral.

The year is marked by festivals in the restored fortress, from summer festivities and a crafts fair in July to Oradea Autumn, which runs for three or four weeks from mid-September and ends on the city's day, 12 October. Football has a long history here: the city's first match was played in 1902, and its club won the Hungarian championship in 1944.

Oradea had about 183,000 people at the 2021 census, making it Romania's ninth largest city, with more people in its wider metropolitan area. It is one of the country's more prosperous cities, with a GDP per head about one and a half times the national average, and it produces most of Bihor County's industrial output. Firms including the building-materials maker Adeplast, the telecoms group RCS-RDS and European Drinks are based here, footwear is among its main industries, and the University of Oradea is one of the largest in Romania.

Most people live in the apartment districts that ring the old centre, such as Nufărul, and travel by tram, bus or car. The city taps geothermal water from two kilometres underground, which provided 7 per cent of the energy for its district heating system in 2021.

Evenings centre on Republicii Street and the squares on either side of the river, and weekends often mean a trip to the warm pools at Băile Felix just outside the city. The airport has grown with a new terminal and more international routes in the 2020s.

Oradea's tables mix Romanian and Hungarian cooking. From the Romanian side come mămăligă, the firm cornmeal porridge eaten with cheese and sour cream; sarmale, minced pork and rice rolled in pickled cabbage; the sour soups called ciorbă; and papanași, fresh-cheese doughnuts topped with sour cream and fruit preserve.

From the Hungarian side comes goulash, the meat-and-vegetable dish seasoned with paprika, and lángos, a deep-fried flatbread that was once made from the last of the bread dough on baking day. Kürtőskalács, the chimney cake of the Transylvanian Hungarians — a strip of sweet yeast dough wound round a cone-shaped spit, rolled in granulated sugar and roasted over charcoal while basted with melted butter — comes from the Székely Land further east.

The strong drink is pálinka or pălincă, a fruit brandy with roots in medieval Hungary that is also made in Transylvania, usually from plums. Republicii Street and the squares around Union Square hold most of the city's restaurants, cafés and bars.