Aiud

Aiud stands in a river valley in Transylvania, where it combines an old fortified centre with a surrounding territory of ten villages. Its name ultimately derives from Saint Giles, to whom the first church in the settlement was dedicated. Aiud is also known in Hungarian as Nagyenyed and in German as Straßburg am Mieresch, names that preserve the linguistic layers of a region shared among Romanian, Hungarian and German communities. At the town’s centre is the Aiud Citadel, an irregular pentagon enclosing numerous buildings within a perimeter of about 350 metres.

The earliest surviving written finds dates from 1293, while local tradition holds that the first stone watchtower was finished during the Mongol invasion of 1241. It thus records repeated struggles over the surrounding principality. Education gave the town another durable role.

Bethlen Gabor College, named after the prince, was founded in 1622 in Alba Iulia and later moved to Aiud after a period in Cluj-Napoca. The Reformed church inside the citadel serves the Hungarian community and is the town’s oldest church. Together, the compact defences and the college show how protection, religious life and learning shaped an urban centre in Transylvania.