Brassó consists of the inner town, which is the commercial centre, and the suburbs of Blumenau, Altstadt and Obere Vorstadt or Bolgárszeg, inhabited respectively by Germans, Magyars and Rumanians. To the east of the inner town rises the Schlossberg, crowned by the citadel, which was erected in 1553, and constitutes the principal remaining fragment of the old fortifications with which Brassó was encircled. The most interesting building in the town is the Protestant church, popularly called the Black Church, owing to its smoke-stained walls, caused by the great fire of 1689. This church, the finest in Transylvania, is a Gothic edifice with traces of Romanesque influence, and was built in 1385-1425. In the square in front of it is the statue of Johannes Honterus (1498-1549), "the apostle of Transylvania," who was born in Brassó, and established here the first printing-press in Transylvania. In the principal square of the inner town stands the town hall, built in 1420 and restored in the 18th century, with a tower 190 ft. high. Brassó is the most important commercial and manufacturing town of Transylvania. Lying near the frontier of Rumania, with easy access through the Tömös pass, it developed from the earliest time an active trade with that country and with the whole of the Balkan states. Its chief industries are iron and copper works, wool-spinning, turkey-red dyeing, leather goods, paper, cement and petroleum refineries. The timber industry in all its branches, with a speciality for the manufacture of the wooden bottles largely used by the peasantry in Hungary and in the Balkan states, as well as the dairy industry, and ham-curing are also fully developed. A peculiarity of Brassó, which constitutes a survival of the old methods of trade with the Balkan states, is the number of money-changers who ply their trade at small movable tables in the market-place and in the open street. Brassó is the most populous town of Transylvania, and its population is composed in about equal numbers of Germans, Magyars and Rumanians. The town, especially on market days, presents an animated and picturesque aspect. Here are seen Germans, Szeklers, Magyars, Rumanians, Armenians and Gipsies, each of them wearing their distinctive national costume, and talking and bargaining in their own special idiom.
Politics Report
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Slice 4 — Part 169
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