The Alba County

The main rivers are the Aries, Ampoi, Sebes and Cugir which flow into the Mures River, which is one of the most important Romania's rivers and crosses the county from North- East to South-West and cutting it in two equal parts.

The climate is a varied one. In the higher zones, the climate is moist and cold, and in the Mures Valley it is drier and warmer.

The capital city of this county is the municipality of Alba Iulia (about 73,000 inhabitants). There are also a municipality (Blaj), six towns (Abrud, Aiud, Cfimpeni, Ocna Mures, Sebes, Zlatna).

The Alba county is connected with Romanian's golden dream: the union of Transylvania with Romania and foundation of the Romania unitary national state done in December, Ist, 1918.

At the last census, the population of the Alba county was of 413, 919 inhabitants as follows: Romanians (90 per cent), Magyars (6 per cent), Gypsies (3 per cent), Germans (0.8 per cent) and other nationalities (0.1 per cent).

The Alba county is a zone of a great tourist interest both for the Romanian traveller and foreign one. The tourist potential of this county consists in numberless vestiges of the millenary past, shown by historic, architectural and art monuments as well as the varied and picturesque landscape and natural reservations uniqualy in Romania and in Europe too.

The folk customs and traditions are a point of interest both for Romanian and foreign tourists. Among them we have to mention the Fair of Girls on the Gaina Mountain organized every year on about July, 20th (Sf. Ilie).

The tourist places are numerous and interesting: in Alba Iulia - the Fortress built in 1715- 1738 and inside there is the Catholic cathedral built in the XIIIth century, the Batthyanaeum Library rounded in 1794 and having 60,000 volumes, the Orthodox Cathedral, the Union Hall, the National Museum of the Union. In the town of Abrud there are well-preserved some buildings with a mediaeval aechitecture; in Rosia Montana, at the Mining Museum the well-known waxed boards written in Latin; in Sebes there is the mediaeval fortress from the XIV-th century; in Aind there is the fortress built in the XV-th century etc. The town of Blaj in an important cultural as well as a religious place on Uniates.