History of Cluj-Napoca

The history of Cluj-Napoca covers the time from the Roman conquest of Dacia, when a Roman settlement named Napoca existed on the location of the later city, through the founding of Cluj and its flourishing as the main cultural and religious center in the historical province of Transylvania, until its modern existence as a city, the seat of Cluj County in north-western Romania.

Ancient times

Etymology and origin

About the origin of the settlement's name Napoca or Napuca several hypotheses have been advanced. The most important are the following:

Dacian name having the same root "nap" (cf. ancient Armenian root "nap") as that of the Dacian river Naparis attested by Herodotus, but with an augmentative suffix uk/ok i.e. over, great

Name derived from that of the Dacianized Scythian tribe known as the Napae

Name probably akin to an indigenous (Thracian) element in Romanian, the word năpârcă 'viper' cf. Albanian nepërkë, nepërtkë

Name derived from the Ancient Greek term napos (νάπος), meaning "timbered valley"

Name derived from the Indo-European root *snā-p- (Pokorny 971-2), "to flow, to swim, damp".

Independent of these hypotheses, scholars agree that the name of the settlement predates the Roman conquest (AD 106).

Pre-Roman times

The oldest human settlement near Cluj, dating from the Neolithic Age, is at Gura Baciului, near Suceagu, in the valley of a tributary of the Nadăș river and nearby the Hoia Forest. Traces of the Thracian-Dacians and Celts suggest that the region was occupied intermittently throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages.

As economies centered around cattle-raising developed in the Pannonian plain, the importance of the salt trade with the Transylvanian Plain became ever more important.