Oradea

Oradea, known to Hungarians as Várad, stands on the Crișul Repede at the eastern edge of the Hungarian plain, beneath the hills of Transylvania. King Ladislaus I founded its bishopric, and his burial here made the cathedral a place of pilgrimage. The fortress housed the bishop's historic seat and the tombs of Hungarian rulers, including King Sigismund, whose remains were laid beside those of Saint Ladislaus in 1437.

The Mongol invasion devastated the town in 1241, but it was rebuilt and prospered as an ecclesiastical and cultural centre. In the fifteenth century Bishop John Vitéz patronised humanist learning and astronomy at Várad. After the division of Hungary, its position made the fortress a crucial stronghold of Transylvania. Italian-style bastions were added in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; Stephen Báthory commissioned the Golden Bastion in 1572. Ottoman armies besieged the fortress in 1598 and 1658 before finally taking it in 1660.

Várad then became the seat of an Ottoman province. In 1692 Habsburg forces captured it after a prolonged campaign, and the damaged town entered another period of rebuilding. A new Catholic cathedral and bishop's palace rose in the eighteenth century, reflecting the renewed importance of the see. The fortress and episcopal foundations preserve the memory of a city long contested at the edge of the plain.