Unseen Romania

Hunedoara - a gothic marvel

A gothic marvel

The legendary and mythic Transylvania hides the most beautiful architectural buildings that Romania has. Usually, Romanians refer to Transylvania as “there”… where everything looks and is better than the rest of the f the country. “There”, you can find a city that hosts Romania’s biggest and most impressive gothic-style secular building, Hunedoara.

The past, the legend

The place where the city of Hunedoara rises today is charged with history from ancient times. Stone age tools were discovered in the hill near the castle called Sanpetru (Saint Peter) and in the surrounding villages. Iron has been extracted in this region from the Iron Age of the Thracians and later, in the Roman times. The importance of this site is attested by the many archeological discoveries such as: the remains of eight Dacian iron furnaces, Dacian and Roman imperial coins. The place where the actual Hunedoara stands was very important for the Roman Empire due to its richness. Thus, there were discovered in the surroundings of the actual city a Roman castrum on Sanpetru hill, and also the remains of a Roman village.

After the Roman military and administrative retreat due to migrations of people from the east in 267 AD, the Romanized and Christianized population continued to thrive in the mountains and isolated valleys and was able to keep faith and connections with the Byzantine Empire and the civilized world. This is attested by discoveries of artifacts and Christian burial places around the city. Thus, Romanians were born, in the passing of time. Around 1000 AD, small political feuds arose and Transylvania fell under the Hungarian Kingdom and became part of it. Later on, an autonomous principality arose, with populations of Romanians, Hungarians, Szeklers and Saxons.

  The first recorded evidence of the city was made in 1265 under the name Hungnod. Soon enough, Hunedoara became an important centre of extracting and processing iron. Documents mention Mogos, Radu and Iancu, sons of Voicu. Ioannus Corvinu (Hungarian: János Hunyadi; Romanian: Iancu Corvin de Hunedoara), the son of Voicu, spent his childhood here. He married Erzsébet (Elisabeta), a Hungarian noblewoman, and advanced to be named voivode of Transylvania, which was by then an autonomous part of the kingdom of Hungary. He consolidated the citadel on top of an ancient fortress and took care of the small city. Besides being a skilled and devoted warrior, the voivode also was interested in his kingdom and the way it looked like, so he consolidated the castle and the feudal domain. . The castle of Hunedoara became one of the biggest in the world, standing as a witness to the greatness of this family of noble warriors and statesmen, in an era of war and despair, as the Ottoman Empire approached Central Europe.

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