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CLUJ-NAPOCA |
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With its cupolas, Baroque outcroppings and weathered fin-de-sičcle
backstreets, downtown CLUJ (Klausenburg to the Germans and Kolozsvár to
the Hungarians) looks every inch the Hungarian provincial capital it
once was. The town was founded by Germans in the twelfth century for the
Hungarian King Geza, and the modern-day Magyars - a third of the city's
population - still regrets its decline, fondly recalling the Magyar
belle époque , when Cluj's café society and literary reputation
surpassed all other cities in the Balkans. Most Romanians think
otherwise: for them, Kolozsvár was the city of the Hungarian landlords
until its restoration to the national patrimony in 1920; they consider
Ceausescu's addition of Napoca to its name in 1974 as recognition that
their Dacian forebears settled here 1850 years ago, long before the
Magyars entered Transylvania. Cluj is also the birthplace of the
Unitarian creed and its centre in Romania, further adding to the
multiethnic, multifaith cocktail.
Under Communism Cluj was industrialized and grew to over 330,000
inhabitants, becoming Transylvania's largest city, but the city retained
something of the langour and raffish undercurrents that had
characterized it in former times, as well as a reputation for being anti-Ceausescu.
Now the city has a rabidly nationalist mayor, Gheorghe Funar , who goes
out of his way to offend the Magyars by banning all Hungarian-language
signs and by constantly accusing Hungary of seeking to undermine
Romania's government and regain Transylvania.
The City
Unlike almost every other Romanian city of comparable size, Cluj has no
Civic Centre; it has thus avoided a widespread demolition of its old
central zone, which remains largely unspoilt within the line of the city
walls. The walls themselves have now been almost entirely demolished,
although the remains of a fifteenth-century citadel still surround the
Transilvania hotel on Cetatuia Hill, north of the river. Behind the
hotel, the citadel's gatehouse, added in 1715, bears a plaque
commemorating the execution of the writer Stefan Ludwig Roth, following
the failure of the 1848 revolution. The Securitate used the hotel as its
power base, and twelve people were supposedly gunned down on the steps
in the 1989 revolution. The plinth of the massive cross, raised here by
the Uniate Church, is the best place to view the city.
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