Beiuş

Beiuș lies in the Crișul Negru valley, in a basin enclosed by the mountains east of the Hungarian plain. The settlement belonged to the estates of the Catholic bishops of Oradea. A record of 1263 recalls its destruction during the Mongol invasion of 1241. By 1410 it was described as a market town with a mayor and jurors, and in 1451 it received privileges as a free town and became a centre for collecting ecclesiastical tithes.