Romania (Romanian: România, an East-Central European state. It is bordered by Ukraine to the north, Moldova to the east, Hungary and Serbia to the west, Bulgaria to the south and the Black Sea to the east. With an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a population of 19 million (2022), it is the eighth largest country in the European Union and the seventh most populous. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, with about 1.9 million inhabitants. Romania joined NATO in 2004 and became a member of the European Union on 1 January 2007. Since 31 March, it has been a member of the Schengen area by air and sea but has not yet entered by road and rail.

The county of Harghita (Romanian: Județul Harghita) is located in the eastern part of Transylvania, with its capital in Csíkszereda. The county covers an area of 6639 km2 and is mainly made up of the mountains of the Eastern Carpathians, such as the Csíki Hills, the Gyergyói Hills, the Kelemen Hills and the Harghita Mountains. The origin of the mountains is volcanic and the area is famous for its hot springs. Harghita is one of the coldest regions in Romania. Harghita County has a population of

310.000 people and has the highest proportion of Hungarians in Transylvania. The main ethnic groups in the county are Hungarians (82.9%), Romanians (12.6%) and Gypsies (1.7%).

Csíkszereda (Romanian: Miercurea-Ciuc, German: Seklerburg) is the seat of Harghita County, a municipality (county town) since 1971. It has about 40,000 inhabitants. Its surroundings were inhabited in the Bronze Age, but the first written record dates back to 1558. Over the years, several neighbourhoods have been annexed to Csíkszereda: Csíkzsögöd, Hargitafördő, Csiba, Zsögödfürdő, Csíksomlyó, Csobotfalva, Várdotfalva, Csíktaploca. Its fame is due to the annual Pentecostal celebrations in the area of its capital, Csíksomlyó, its major ice hockey team and its nationally popular beer. Csíkszereda is one of the coldest cities in Romania. In winter, temperatures can drop below -30 °C. A temperatures of -40 °C have been recorded in the vicinity of the city on several occasions.

Sights of Csíkszereda

• The Mikó Castle, today the Szekler Museum of Csík. Today it is listed as a monument and is the most important monument and historical landmark of the area of Csíkszereda
• The Church of the Holy Cross, the city’s first Roman Catholic church, built in 1758 in Baroque style.
• The Greek Catholic Church was built in 1930 and now is an Orthodox church.
• The Town Hall, formerly the County Hall, was built in 1886 in eclectic style.
• The Palace of Justice, the building of the Tribunal of Justice, built in 1892, in eclectic style.
• The Greek Orthodox Church was built in the Neo-Byzantine style between 1929 and 1935.
• The Márton Áron High School was built between 1909 and 1911 in secessionist style. The former Roman Catholic High School has borne the name of one of its famous students since 1990.
• The modern city centre was created between 1970 and 1990 with the demolition of the old centre.
• The new Roman Catholic parish church of the 1st Roman Catholic Church of Csíkszereda, the Millennium Church was designed by Imre Makovecz.

Csíksomlyó

Csíksomlyó church and monastery, one of the greatest pilgrimage sites and cultural and historical monuments of Hungary. Three chapels stand on the hillside above the church. The former Roman Catholic High School of Csíksomlyó was built between 1780 and 1782, and many famous people studied within its walls, today it is children`s house.

The town’s cultural, literary and artistic traditions are linked to the neighbouring settlement of Csíksomlyó, now administratively part of Csíkszereda, where a secondary school was already in operation in the mid-17th century and where in 1675 the Franciscan monk János Kájoni established a book printing press. Csíksomlyó was also a centre of Transylvanian school drama from the early 18th century. It was here that the students performed the Passion Play. The teaching staff and the youth of the Catholic school and the teachers’ training college were also involved in local cultural life.

Traditional events

Csíksomlyó Saint’s Day – a religious event held every year at Pentecost near Csíksomlyó in Transylvania, with hundreds of thousands of participants.

The Harghita County Days – a series of events traditionally timed to coincide with the week of the Pentecostal Feast of Csíksomlyó, with numerous cultural events organised by the Harghita County Council.

Day of a Thousand Szekler Girls – a traditional show of folk dance, folk music and folk costumes organised on the first Sunday of July.

Old Music Festival – a week-long series of musical events organised annually in July.

Harghita National Szekler Folk Ensemble

The Harghita National Szekler Folk Ensemble is the professional folk dance group of the city. It represents Csíkszereda, Harghita County and the Transylvanian Hungarians with its performances, presenting Transylvanian folk dances, folk music heritage and traditions on several tours abroad.

Education

4 day-care centres, 4 primary schools, 4 secondary schools, 4 technical college, 1 special school, 1 university.

Politics

The mayor is Attila Korodi, the deputy mayors are Béla Bors and Enikő Sógor. Representatives of the

RMDSZ political party.

Partner city

Hungary, Budapest. It also has several other twin towns.

Consulate

The Consulate of the Republic of Hungary is located here.

Sports

The most popular winter sports in the city are ice hockey, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, bobsleigh, biathlon, speed skating, figure skating, etc.

The Csíki Mountains

The Csík hills consist mainly of crystalline shales and marine sediments. There are also limestones, dolomites and conglomerates. The Gyimesi Pass, which connects the Csíki Basin with the Tatros River valley, passes through the middle of the mountains. Its highest points are the Naskalat peak (1550 m) in the Naskalat Mountains and the Saj peak (1553 m) from east of Egerszék.

Kissomlyó Hill: According to tradition, Kissomlyó Hill is the holy mountain of the Székely Catholics, which has been prayed over by pilgrims for centuries. It is on the side of the mountain that the Pentecost Saturday procession takes place. On its western side are the crosses of the Calvary Stations. On the top of the hill are three chapels where Christians also gather for devotions.

Nagysomlyó Hill is a 1033-metre-high double volcanic cone in Csíksomlyó, in the middle of the Csík Basin. Its eastern and southern sides are covered with pine forest, while its western side is covered with dense beech. At the top is a 25 m high observation tower made of metal tubes, from here you can get the best view of the whole of the Csík Basin. Nagysomlyó Castle once stood on the highest peak of the mountain. On the flat top of the lower peak of the mountain once stood the old monastery of Somlyó. It was probably the first monastery built by St. Stephen.

Church of St. John (Csíkdelne)

On the outskirts of Csíkdelne, to the west of the village, the church of St. John the Baptist, of Árpád origin, stands alone, surrounded by a fortified wall. The church stood in the village of Tordafalva, which was destroyed during the Tatar invasion, and was a common church of several villages. After the Tartar invasion, the people of Tordafalva moved to the present-day Pálfalva and partly to Delne. The church was entered in the papal tithe register as the church of Csíkdelne in 1333 under the name Dolna.

Csíkszentmiklós

The village lies 11 km northeast of Csíkszereda in the valley of the Szépvíz stream. It is connected with Szépvíz. The St. Nicholas stream flows through the village. It was first mentioned in 1332 as S. Nicolao. Its first Romanesque church, rebuilt in Gothic style in 1498, was burnt down by the Tatars in 1661 and its tower was destroyed in 1694. The tower was rebuilt in 1724.

Csíkszépvíz

Csíkszépvíz (often Szépvíz) is a village in Romania, Harghita County. It is situated 12 km north-east of Csíkszereda, on the road to Gyimes, in the valley of the Szépvíz stream. It includes Csíkszentmiklós, Csíkborzsova and Bükkloka. According to legend, its name comes from the fact that St. László, after defeating the Kuns, jumped his horse from a cliff into the stream and said, “Drink my horse, because this water is beautiful. In 1669, with the permission of Prince Mihály Apafi I, Armenians settled here and in less than 200 years developed it into a wealthy, urban settlement. It is a former trading place of the people of Gyimes, and there are springs of mineral water in the area. Above it is a dam and reservoir built in 1986.

Gyimes

The road through the Gyimes pass leads along the ridge of the Csík mountain group, from Csíkszépvíz to the Tatros valley, forming the Gyimes valley, which initially stretches north-northeast and then turns southeast at Gyimesbükk at 720 metres.

The valley of Tatros is one of the largest valleys of the Csík Mountains, with Kerekhavas (1376 m) rising to the west and Bothavas (1374 m) to the east, while Tarhavas (1662 m) towers above the former Gyimes customs and the Rakoczi castle of Gyimesbük. In it lie the villages of Gyimesfelsőlok, Gyimesközéplok and Gyimesbükk.

The Csángós of Gyimes

The term Csángó is the collective name of several Hungarian-speaking minority ethnic groups living in Romania. They are divided into three main groups: the Moldavian Csángók, the Gyimes Csángók and the Barcasági Csángók. The Gyimes Csángók are the name of an ethnic group living in Romania, in the Tatros River valley running from the Csíki Hills to Moldavia and in the Gyimes pass. The ancestors of the Gyimes Csángó emigrated from Szekler and Moldavian Hungarian villages in the 17th and 18th centuries. They have three villages, Gyimesfelsőlok, Gyimesközéplok and Gyimesbükk. The Gyimes Csángós have preserved the archaic features of the Szekler peasant culture due to the closed nature of their folk culture (Gyimesfelsőlok, Gyimesközéplok, Gyimesbükk, Kóstelek, Magyarcsügés, Háromkút, Egerszék, and downstream from -egerszék, the Úz valley e and the Csobányos valley to the north).

Borospataka

Borospataka (Romanian: Valea Boroș) is a village in Gyimes, Harghita County, Transylvania, part of Gyimesközéplok. It is situated at an altitude of 919 metres above sea level, 2.2 km from Gyimesközéplok. The village has 432 inhabitants, all of them Roman Catholic.

The Gyimes Skanzen Pension

Borospataka has the only Gyimes Csángó open-air museum on 30,000 square metres, on both banks of the Boros stream. In 2002 the Szász family bought the land, where only an old house and a barn stood. They then built the eleven farmhouses, which are still standing today, built in their original state and furnished in period style. The buildings come from the villages of Csíkmadaras,

Gyimesbükk, Gyimesfelsőlok, Gyimesközéplok and Nagygyimes. In 2012, the water mill in Görbepatakka, built in 1873, was renovated. A “folk art museum” has also been established in the open-air museum, where the former utensils, furniture, furnishings and folk costumes of the Gyimes region can be seen.

Source: wikipedia.org, hargitamegye.ro, erdely-szep.hu

Áron Márton

Áron Márton (Csíkszentdomokos, 28 August 1896 – Gyulafehérvár, 29 September 1980) was a Catholic priest, bishop of Transylvania, titular archbishop. He began his secondary education at the Catholic (Franciscan) high school in Csíksomlyó (1907-1911), which moved to a newly built building in Csíkszereda in 1912, where he attended grades V-VII (1911-1914). In the school year 1914-1915, he finished the VIII grade at the Roman Catholic High School of Majláth in Gyulafehervár, where the bishop gathered young people preparing for the priesthood. He had his secondary school graduation here in 12^th of June 1915. On 24 December 1938, Pope Pius XI appointed him Bishop of the County of Gyulafehervár.

He was consecrated bishop on 12 February 1939 in the Church of St Michael by the Apostolic Nuncio Andrea Cassulo. He chose his episcopal motto – Non recuso laborem – from Saint Martin of Tours. On 18 May 1944, in a speech at the ordination ceremony in St. Michael’s Church in Cluj Napoca, he spoke out courageously against the deportation of the Jews. After 1947, the strengthening communist and atheist regime took action with arrests, an anti-church press campaign, the nationalisation of church schools and the banning of the Greek Catholic Church and monastic orders.

Áron Márton fought for freedom of religion and conscience. On 21 June 1949, Áron Márton was summoned to Bucharest to negotiate the statute of the Catholic Church. He was stopped on the road near Tövis and detained. Áron Márton was first held in pre-trial detention for about two years in a prison under the Bucharest Interior Ministry building. On 6 August 1951, a military tribunal in Bucharest sentenced him to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment and hard labour for life for treason and currency fraud. He was detained first in the prison of Nagyenyed and then in the prison of Máramaros. In 1952, he was put in a cell with Greek Catholic Bishop Alexandru Todea for three years in Máramaros, with whom he remained in excellent contact after their release. During the bishop’s years in prison, the diocese was led by governors (ordinaries) who remained independent of state ambitions. Aaron Marton was only willing to accept his release if he was not subject to conditions. On 3 January 1955, the Prezidium of the Grand National Assembly suspended his prison sentence and on 6 January he was taken to the Archdiocese of Bucharest under house arrest.

He was allowed to return to Gyulafehérvár on 24 March. His activities were closely monitored by the state authorities: on 30 November he was placed on the operational register of the Securitate, and a listening device was installed in his study between 21 August and 22 August 1956. On 30 May 1957, the Minister of the Interior recommended his imprisonment. The release of Bishop Márton from his palace imprisonment was due to a new change in the international situation. He was imprisoned in a palace for 10 years. In 1968, the Supreme Court annulled his previous conviction. On 23 May 1974, Bishop Aaron’s prostate cancer required medical intervention. On 31 January 1976, citing his illness, he submitted his resignation, which was renewed on 15 May, but the Holy See did not accept it. On 2 April 1980, in the 42nd year of his episcopate, Pope John Paul II released him from the governance of the diocese. He died at quarter past nine on 29 September 1980, the day of St

Michael (patron saint of the diocese and the cathedral). Two days later, Pope John Paul II personally announced the death of Áron Márton in St. Peter’s Square.

Source: wikipedia.org