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Transylvania
The Carpathian-ringed plateau of Romania, once a principality between empires
Transylvania, the "land beyond the forest," is a high basin inside the curve of the Carpathians, where Saxon fortified churches, Hungarian market towns, and Romanian wooden churches share the same valleys. Its name is famous abroad through the novel Dracula, but its real history is a long contest among Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs, and Romania. For more than a century it was a self-governing principality that legally tolerated several Christian churches at a time when most of Europe did not. Since 1918 it has belonged to Romania, and although it has no administrative status, it remains Romania's most clearly defined historical region, home to a large Hungarian minority whose language rights and calls for local autonomy recur in Romanian–Hungarian relations.
Transylvania proper covers about 55,000 square kilometers, a rolling plateau drained by the Mureș, Someș, and Olt rivers and ringed by the Eastern and Southern Carpathians and the Apuseni Mountains. Salt, gold, and timber made it rich, and towns founded by German settlers in the 12th and 13th centuries, among them Sibiu, Brașov, and Sighișoara, still anchor the landscape. In the broader sense common in Romania today, which adds the Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș to the west and north, the region spans 16 counties and about 100,000 square kilometers, with 6.5 million people at the 2021 census and Cluj-Napoca as its largest city. All of it lies in Romania. The Székely Land in the east, in Harghita and Covasna counties, has Hungarian-speaking majorities.
Transylvania belonged to the medieval Kingdom of Hungary until the Ottoman victory at Mohács in 1526 broke that kingdom apart. Its eastern remnant became the Principality of Transylvania, recognized in the 1570 Treaty of Speyer, an Ottoman vassal that kept its own elected princes and diet. The Habsburgs took control at the end of the 17th century, made it a grand principality in 1765, and merged it into Hungary after the Compromise of 1867. On December 1, 1918, an assembly of Romanians at Alba Iulia proclaimed union with Romania, and the Treaty of Trianon confirmed the new border in 1920. The Second Vienna Award of 1940 returned the northern half to Hungary, and the 1947 Paris peace treaty restored the 1920 line, which still stands.