The best city hikes and walks in Cluj

Unity Square (Piața Unirii) is the heart of Cluj-Napoca. At 220 by 160 metres, it is one of the largest urban squares in the country. It is dominated by a number of historic buildings such as St. Michael's Church or Banffy Palace, as well as the Matthias Corvinus Monument in its centre. There are paid parking spaces and public toilets here. The remains of Roman buildings (Vestigii romane) can be seen under a glass cover.

The Cluj-Napoca City Hall was built at the end of the 19th century according to the plans of Ignác Alpár. With its Viennese Baroque-style façade and corner bell tower with clock, the building was initially the seat of the Royal Hungarian government of the Kolozs region (Cluj-Napoca is called Kolozsvár in Hungarian). With around 325,000 inhabitants, Cluj-Napoca is the second largest city in Romania and the largest city in Transylvania.

The Matthias Corvinus Monument (Monumentul Matia Corvin) is a bronze equestrian statue created by the Hungarian sculptor János Fadrusz and erected in 1902. It shows the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus ("the Raven"), who was born on February 23, 1443 in Cluj-Napoca. Corvinus ruled over Hungary and Croatia from 1458 until his death on April 6, 1490 in Vienna and was also (counter-)king of Bohemia from 1469 to 1490. He conquered large parts of the Habsburg hereditary lands and ruled these areas from Vienna from 1485 onwards. The monument and the inscription on the base have often caused a stir in the past; this culminated in civil war-like unrest between Hungarians and Romanians before the turn of the millennium. The diplomatic result is the current inscription in Latin: "Rex Mathias"

The landmark of Cluj-Napoca is St. Michael's Church (Biserica Sfântul Mihail) in the city center. It is considered the most important example of a three-aisled Gothic hall church in Transylvania. Its construction probably began around 1350 on the site of a former St. James's Chapel. The choir was built in the first phase. The building was originally intended to have two towers, but one remained unfinished. The completed tower on the north side, built between 1834 and 1863 in the neo-Gothic style, is 80 meters high including the cross, making it the highest church tower in Romania. Because of the nearby Cluj airport, a red light flashes at the top. The church is now used by the Roman Catholic community of Cluj. From 1566 until the Counter-Reformation in 1716, St. Michael's Church was the parish church of the Unitarian community. The reformer Franz David held his first anti-Trinitarian sermon here in 1566. At the end of the 18th century, the Unitarian community built its own church, the Unitarian Church. After it was returned to the Catholics, the church was expanded with baroque elements, such as the pulpit, which is crowned by the patron saint, Saint Michael, slaying the dragon.

The Bishop of the Diocese of Alba Iulia, Áron Márton, was President of the Romanian Bishops' Conference from 1970 until his death in 1980. Because of his opposition to the planned deportation of Romanian and Hungarian Jews during the Second World War, Márton was awarded the Israeli honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations" on December 27, 1999.

The "Casa Matei Corvin" is the birthplace of the future Hungarian king. It is the oldest secular building in the city, built in the 15th century in the Gothic style as a small guesthouse. Matthias Corvinus ("the Raven") was born here on February 23, 1443. He ascended the Hungarian throne in 1458 at the age of fourteen. In gratitude for the hospitality that the house owner Jakab Méhffi had once shown his heavily pregnant mother, King Matthias decreed in 1467 that Méhffi and all his descendants were exempt from all taxes and duties. Over the course of its history, the house served as a prison, hospital and museum. Today it houses an institute for fine arts at the local art and design college.

The music school is housed in the former monastery next to the Franciscan church. The monastery was founded in 1442 under the aegis of the Dominicans, probably on the ruins of a Roman temple. When the Catholic religious orders were expelled by the Protestants in March 1556, the building was no longer used for religious purposes. The Hungarian Queen Izabella lived here until 1557, after which the place was converted into a school. In 1693, under pressure from the House of Habsburg, the church and monastery were returned to the Catholic Church and used by the Jesuits. Their Jesuit school existed here until 1725, after which the Franciscans returned to the city. Inside the monastery there was a famous library, the collection of which included more than a thousand volumes. After the communist authorities abolished the religious orders, the "music school" was located in the monastery building, from which the "Sigismund Toduță Music School" emerged, which still exists today.

On the site of the first Christian church in Cluj from the 11th century, which was destroyed during the great Tartar invasion in 1241, the current Franciscan church was built between 1260 and 1290 in the late Romanesque style. The church and its monastery were initially used by Dominican monks. When the Catholics returned after the Reformation, the Franciscans began the restoration of the church in 1728, building the tower of the west façade in the Baroque style and providing the interior with a Baroque vault at a lower level than the old Gothic ceiling, which had collapsed at that time. The construction work was completed in 1745.