Cluj-Napoca (Hungarian Kolozsvár; German Klausenburg), city in central Romania, on the Somesul Mic River. Formerly called Cluj, the city is the capital of Cluj County. It is an episcopal see for the Eastern Orthodox, Uniate, and Reformed churches. Industries in the city include textile and paper mills, sugar refineries, breweries and distilleries, and earthenware, soap, and candle factories. Among the principal buildings of Cluj-Napoca are the Church of Saint Michael, a Gothic structure erected between 1396 and 1432; the house (now an ethnographical museum) in which Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, was born in 1440; a Reformed church, constructed in 1486; the Batthanyi Palace, residence of the former princes of Transylvania; and the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, founded in 1919. Cluj-Napoca has a large ethnic Hungarian population, and relations between the Hungarians and Romanians have been strained.
Historians believe that Cluj-Napoca was built on the site of the ancient Roman settlement of Napoca. Saxons (Germans) settled there in AD1178 and dominated the city until the 16th century. Becoming Lutherans during the Reformation, they had to leave the city following the establishment of the Uniate church during the Counter Reformation. Then the population was predominantly Magyar. In later centuries, the city was the seat of government for Transylvania as crownland of Austria and as a province of Austria-Hungary. In 1918 it became a Romanian city when Transylvania united with Romania. In 1940, during World War II, northern Transylvania, including Cluj-Napoca, was ceded to Hungary, but it was recovered by Romania in 1945 at the end of the war. Population (1997 estimate) 332,297.
