Făgăraș (; ,ăgăraș ) is a city in central Romania, located in Brașov County. It lies on the Olt River and has a population of 28,330 as of 2011. It is situated in the historical region of Transylvania, and is the main city of a subregion, Țara Făgărașului.
Geography
The city is located at the foothills of the Făgăraș Mountains, on their northern side. It is traversed by the DN1 road, west of Brașov and east of Sibiu. On the east side of the city, between an abandoned field and a gas station, lies the geographical center of Romania, at .
The Olt River flows east to west on the north side of the city; its left tributary, the Berivoi River, discharges into the Olt on the west side of the city, after receiving the waters of the Racovița River. The Berivoi and the Racovița were used to bring water to a since-closed major chemical plant located on the outskirts of the city.
The small part of the city that lies north of the Olt is known as Galați. A former village first recorded in 1396, it was incorporated into Făgăraș in 1952.
Climate
Făgăraș has a humid continental climate (Cfb in the Köppen climate classification).
Name
One explanation is that the name was given by the Pechenegs, who called the nearby river Fagar šu (Fogaras/Făgăraș), which in the Pecheneg language means ash(tree) water.
According to linguist Iorgu Iordan, the name of the town is a Romanian diminutive of a hypothetical collective noun *făgar ("beech forest"), presumably derived from fag, "beech tree". Hungarian linguist István Kniezsa deemed this idea unlikely.
Another interpretation is that the name derives from the Hungarian word fogoly (partridge).
There has also been speculation that the name can be explained by folk etymology, as the rendering of the words fa ("wooden") and garas ("mite") in Hungarian. Legends state that money made out of wood had been used to pay the peasants who built the Făgăraș Citadel, an important fortress near the border of the Kingdom of Hungary, around 1310. This view is in harmony with an idea advanced by Iorgu Iordan, who suggested a diminutive derivation from *făgar, found elsewhere in Romania as well.
History
Făgăraș, together with Amlaș, constituted during the Middle Ages a traditional Romanian local-autonomy region in Transylvania. The first written Hungarian document mentioning Romanians in Transylvania referred to Vlach lands ("Terra Blacorum") in the Făgăraș Region in 1222. (In this document, Andrew II of Hungary gave Burzenland and the Cuman territories South of Burzenland up to the Danube to the Teutonic Knights.) After the Tatar invasion in 1241–1242, Saxons settled in the area. In 1369, Louis I of Hungary gave the Royal Estates of Făgăraș to his vassal, Vladislav I of Wallachia. As in other similar cases in medieval Europe (such as Foix, Pokuttya, or Dauphiné), the local feudal had to swear oath of allegiance to the king for the specific territory, even when the former was himself an independent ruler of another state. Therefore, the region became the feudal property of the princes of Wallachia, but remained within the Kingdom of Hungary. The territory remained in the possession of Wallachian princes until 1464.
Except for this period of Wallachian rule, the town itself was centre of the surrounding royal estates. During the rule of Transylvanian Prince Gabriel Bethlen (1613–1629), the city became an economic role model city in the southern regions of the realm. Bethlen rebuilt the fortress entirely.
Ever since that time, Făgăraș was the residence of the wives of Transylvanian Princes, as an equivalent of Veszprém, the Hungarian "city of queens". Of these, Zsuzsanna Lorántffy, the widow of George I Rákóczy established a Romanian school here in 1658. Probably the most prominent of the princesses residing in the town was the orphan Princess Kata Bethlen (1700–1759), buried in front of the Reformed church. The church holds several precious relics of her life. Her bridal gown, with the family coat of arms embroidered on it, and her bridal veil now covers the altar table. Both are made of yellow silk.
Făgăraș was the site of several Transylvanian Diets, mostly during the reign of Michael I Apafi. The church was built around 1715–1740. Not far from it is the Radu Negru National College, built in 1907-1909. Until 1919, it was a Hungarian-language gymnasium where Mihály Babits taught for a while.
