Lugoj - History

History

Lugoj was once a strongly fortified place and of greater relative importance than at present.

A diploma dated 22 August 1376, signed by king Sigismund of Luxemburg, shows that Lugoj city was donated to landowners Ladislaus and Stephen Loszonczy. At the end of the XIV century, after the Battle of Nicopolis (1396), the Turks crossed the Danube invading Banat and reached the gates of Lugoj. During major campaigns against the Turks, Hunyadi, as a comite of Timis (1440), took steps to organize the city's defense system strengthening the city with trenches, ramparts and palisades.

The Banate of Lugoj-Caransebes resisted to ottoman pressures until 1658, when Acaţiu Barcsai, Prince of Transylvania, asked Lugoj and Caransebes to accept the decision taken by the Diet of Sighisoara to be sujected to Turkish occupation.

After the defeat of the Turks during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs went on offensive and briefly occupied the cities of Lugoj and Lipova (1688). On September 25, 1695 the battle between the armies of the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire that took place near Lugoj ended with the defeat of the Austrians. After signing the Treaty of Karlovitz (1699), Banat remained under Ottoman rule. After the Treaty of Passarowitz (21 July 1718) and the expulsion of the Turks, German colonization began, with the first colonists settling on the left bank of the river Timis (circa 1720) creating "German Lugoj". In the eighteenth century many public buildings were built, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church "Assumption".

In 1778, following the incorporation of Banat in Hungary, Lugoj became county seat of Caras, and in 1795 the Romanian Lugoj and the German Lugoj were unified. Eftimie Murgu settled in Lugoj in 1841, and in June 1848 he chaired the second National Assembly of Romanians of Banat, where they expressed in postulates the National Order of Romanians during the Revolutionary Movement from Banat, whose center was Lugoj.

In the summer of 1842 a great fire took place, in which about 400 houses and important buildings were destroyed.

In August 1849 it was the last seat of the Hungarian revolutionary government, and the last refuge of Lajos Kossuth and several other leaders of the Revolution prior to their escape to the Ottoman Empire.

Under the imperial resolution of 12 December 1850, Lugoj became the seat of the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Banat. Lugoj was county seat of Caras-Severin from 1881 until 1925, when after the new territorial-administrative organization of Romania, the Caras Severin County was created, the latter residing in Lugoj until the end of World War II .

The Iron Bridge, a symbol of Lugoj, was built in 1902.

On November 3, 1918 the Great National Assembly took place in Lugoj, where the right of self-determination of the Romanian nation was proclaimed after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI.

In modern times, it was the home town of famous Dracula actor Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's real family name was Blaskó; the stagename Lugosi is the adjective form of Lugos, the town's Hungarian name.