Send Gift Baskets to Bistrița, Romania

Neolithic remains are the oldest evidence of settlement in Bistriţa. During the 12th century, the Turkic Pechenegs settled the area following attacks by the Cumans. Transylvanian Saxons settled the region in 1206 and named it Nösnerland. Many fugitives, convicts, and poor people were looking for lands and opportunities among the settlers. The destruction of Markt Nosa (“Market Nösen”) under the Mongols of central Europe is described in a document from 1241. At that time, the city was called Byzturch. In the medieval era, Bistrița became an important trading post due to its location along several trade routes.

The town of Bistriţa became a free royal town in 1330. The city was granted the right to hold a 15-day fair every year on Saint Bartholomew Day in 1353 and a seal featuring an ostrich bearing a horseshoe. As a result, its artisans traveled extensively throughout Moldavia and developed markets throughout the region. As of 1409, it has the right to have defensive walls surrounding it. Fortifications surrounding the city included 18 defensive towers and bastions defended by guilds in 1465. Fortressed churches were also used to support the city. By 1713, the Saxon magistrates expelled the Romanian population, but they returned later. Between 1836 and 1850, five fires severely damaged the town. It was destroyed by fire in 1857 when the tower’s roof and bells were destroyed. A few years later, the roof was reconstructed. There was also extensive damage done to the city’s medieval citadel due to fires in the nineteenth century.

Following the lifting of the 1848 prohibition on Jews settling in Bistrița, a Jewish community developed there in the 1860s. This impressive synagogue was built in 1893 and is among the largest in Transylvania. The community was predominantly Orthodox with a substantial Hasidic segment, but German and Hungarian Jews lived there. Theodor Herzl corresponded with Nissan Kahan in Bistriţa, where the Zionist movement was supported between the two world wars by a Zionist youth organization, Ivriyah, under the direction of Solomon Zalman Ullmann, rabbi of Bistrița, a prominent yeshiva flourished between 1924 and 1942. Twelve Bistriţa Jews were killed in action during World War I, while 138 were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army.

From 1867 to 1918, the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That year, Transylvania united with Romania on December 1, and on December 5, Romanian Army troops entered Bistrița. Bistrița became the capital of the county of Năsăud in 1925.