Hunedoara County

Hunedoara (Romanian pronunciation: [huneˈdo̯ara]) is a county (judeţ) of Romania, in Transylvania, with its capital city at Deva. The county is part of the Danube-Kris-Mures-Tisza Euroregion.

Name

In Hungarian, it is known as Hunyad megye, in German as Kreis Hunedoara, and in Slovak as Hunedoara.

Demographics

In 2011, the county had a population of 396,253 and the population density was 56.1/km².

Hunedoara's Jiu River Valley is traditionally a coal-mining region, and its high level of industrialisation drew many people from other regions of Romania in the period before the fall of the communist regime.

Geography

This county has a total area of 7,063 km².

Mainly, the relief is made up of mountains, divided by the Mureș River valley which crosses the county from East to West. To the North side there are the Apuseni Mountains and to the South side there are mountains from the Southern Carpathians group, Parâng Mountains group and Retezat-Godeanu Mountains group: Orastie and Surianu Mountains (South-East), Retezat Mountains (South), Poiana Ruscai Mountains (South-West).

Hunedoara

Hunedoara (Romanian pronunciation: [huneˈdo̯ara]; German: Eisenmarkt; Hungarian: Vajdahunyad, Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈvɒjdɒhuɲɒd]) is a city in Hunedoara County, Transylvania, Romania. It is located in southwestern Transylvania near the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, and administers five villages: Boş (Bós), Groş (Grós), Hăşdat (Hosdát; Hochstätten), Peştişu Mare (Alpestes) and Răcăştia (Rákosd).

The city includes the most important Gothic-style secular building in Transylvania: the Hunyad Castle, which is closely connected with the Hunyadi family. The castle was destroyed by fire five times, but underwent many reconstructions from Austro-Hungarian and later Romanian authorities. Besides the castle, the town developed as a production center for iron and a market for the mountain regions nearby. During the 20th century, Hunedoara's population increased to 86,000 inhabitants. The city contained the largest steel works in Romania (until Galați took the lead), but activity gradually diminished after the fall of the Iron Curtain due to the loss of the market. This was a blow to the overall prosperity of the town, which is now recovering through new investments.