Rădăuți
Template:Infobox City in Romania Rădăuţi [approx. pronunciation: rah-dah-OOTS] (German: Radautz, Hungarian: Radóc, Yiddish: ראַדעװיץ / Radevits, Polish: Radowce, Ukrainian: Радівці / Radivtsi) is a town in Suceava County, Romania with a population of 27,759 inhabitants.
Geography
Town in northern Moldova, situated in a field between Suceava and Suceviţa rivers, at 37 km (23 miles) from Suceava, at 375 m (410 yards) altitude, and it is one of the oldest settlement in Moldova, known since the 15th century.
History
The first document that reminds the town appeared in 1392, in an "uric" (act), Rădăuţi being reminded as the Radomir's village, making part of his properties, from which, as some versions say, it is supposed to have derived the name of the town.
Other opinions say that the settlement has its origins in old times and the name Rădăuţi comes from the Latin word Rottacenum, given by the soldiers to name the Roman garrison in Siret. Under slave influences we assist at a distortion of the original name Rottacenum and its conversion to Rădăuţi, as it appears in later documents. The name of the town proceeds from the name "Radu", probably a ruler of the local army from the period foregoing the rottenness of Moldova. The oldest certification documentary of Rădăuţi is from 1413, in a document of Alexandru cel Bun.
At the middle of the XIVth century, there was already a flourishing settlement here, so that Bogdan I The Founder (1359-1365) decided to build at Rădăuţi the first church of the country, which became the center of a bishopry. The archaeological researches have noticed, around the St. Nicholas church (Bogdana Monastery) a level of living previous to Bogdan’s age, which would plead for the existence of a center anterior to the formation of the state in Rădăuţi.
The evolution of the town in the middle ages was determined by the privilege of organizing fairs, this economical function being justified by the favorable localization of the town at the contact between the mountain and the tableland area, determining the mercantile trades from the two regions to take place here. The fairs at Rădăuţi have been dated from the time of Stephen the Great (a document from 1481), but at that time took place only the intervention of the reign for solving the problem related to this manifestations, which were, of course, much older.
It was one of the larger cities of the Duchy of Bukovina under the Habsburg administration, during which time it saw a high level of German immigration.