Located in the heart of the Transylvanian Plateau, on
the rich and fertile valley of Mures river, the town of Targu Mures has
preserved traces of human presence since almost all historical periods.
The archeological digging made in various parts of the town revealed remains
of the Hallstatt culture, having the age of Rome(753 BC) but there were
found human shelters from the early bronze period too.
However, the place defined as an administrative
unit appears in the written historical memory of posterity, much later.
According to tradition, on the very place where the new town was created
somewhere in the mid 16th century, there had been six or seven small settlements,
and around 1300, when the town of Cluj was being granted by king Carol
Robert the title of Free Royal Town, Targu Mures was first mentioned by
an original source, under the name of Forum Siculorum (Fair/Borough of
Seklars). The urbanization process started only when the old borough of
the Mures Seat – Miercurea Nirajului – became more and more cramped as
a result of the revival of an economy devastated by the Tartar invasion.
On the gentle terrace slopes of Mures river a nw borough of the Seklars
was being formed.
It is also relevant the fact that the first documentary note about
the Seklars on Mures river valley belongs to this period(1293), as the
history of the town has closely related to that of region where it became
a seat. Later on, in 1316 in a document of the Franciscan monks, and then
between 1332 and 1336, in the register of the Pope's Shares the town is
mentioned as Novum Forum Siculorum (the Selar’s New Borough). In 1599 voivode
Mihai Viteazu names it “oppidi nostri Zekelywasarhely” (our borough Zekelywasarhely).
The royal and voivodal rights and privileges granted
several times to the town, during the 14th and 15th centuries – mostly
those granted by king Matei Corvinul on 18 April 1470, referring to the
establishment of the local administration, respectively that on 28 August
1482 by which the same king was granting to the town the right to organize
three fairs per year – quickened the shaping process of urbane institutions,
further that of urbanization. On 4 February 1487 Setfan Bathori regulates,
namely re-establishes, the old rights and privileges for citizens. This
document mentions for the first time the guilds in the town. The
first guild privilege – that of butchers’ – goes back to 1493, and at the
end of the 16th century there were more than ten well organized guilds.
In 1616 Gabriel Bethlen granted to the town the title of Free
Royal Town, this time under the name of Marosvasarhely. This name will
be transposed in language of the Romanian inhabitants, first as Mures-Osorheiu,
later as Targu Mures. The Transylvanian Saxsons will call it Neumarkt am
Mieresch.
At that time, in 1616, the conditions were created for the construction
of the town fortress – the Citadel -, which was started in 1602. The initiator
and coordinator af the construction was Borsos Tamas (1566-1634), town
judge, remarkable diplomat, messenger of prince Gabriel Bethlen in Constantinople.
All over Europe in those boisterous times when only fortress walls could
offer protection against danger, the guilds were in charge of building
and, later on, organizing its defense. The names of the strongholds in
the fortress of Targu Mures, preserved by tradition, such as that of the
“shoe makers”, of “furries”, of “coopers”, of “butchers”of “tailors”,
make us think of their efforts to raise the protecting fortress of the
town. Nagy Szabo Ferenc himself, the reputed chronicler of the town, captain
of the fortress defenders, was also head of the tailors’ guild.
Witness to special local political events, such
as the enthronement of the Transylvanian prince Francisc Rakoczi II, the
town did not escape the great waves of European political events.On 24-25
March 1848 the news of the Recolution in Pesta stirred the town on the
Mures river. The young Romainan chancellery clerks Al. Papiu Ilarian and
other protagonists of the Romanian revolution, were celebrating together
with the Hungarian inhabitans.One year later the headquarters of general
Ben were installed here and it was from here that the
Hungarian poet Petofi Sandor left for the fatal battlefield in Albesti.
The town stepped on the road of modernization on
the dawns of the new century due to worth of mayor dr. Bernady Gyorgy.
The sewerage system, the public ilumination, the building of schools and
public buildings, an entire range of public institutions, have preserved
the memory of the mayor, creator of the modern city.
History recorded the fact that Targu Mures became a Free Royal
Town long after Cluj, Brasov and Sibiu and had long kept its features of
market town. However, there is no doubt that its economical life had been
organized according to western patterns ever since Medieval times, and
its spiritual life and its system of values had integratedit into western
civilization.
If the spirit of the place could speak up, it would certainly
use the language of the correspondence between Jozsef Teleki and Voltaire,
or the language Gauss and Farkas Bolyai’s exchange of ideas, the language
of the disciples of Targu Mures, graduates of universities in Leyden, Utrecht
or Padova, which is altogether the language of Europe, the creator of universal
values.
A creative spirit knows no language barriers and its message
bears the same wisdom in Targu Mures as in Paris or in Wiennea. And this
was the spirit both of the Schola Particula and the Calvinist College banished
from Sarospatak, and that of the Royal Tables, established in Targu Mures
in 1754, as well as the spirit which dominated the famous library of Teleki
Samuel, full of invaluable rare pieces.
The present center of the city preserves the impress of
style, such as the Gothic of the church in Citadel, the Baroque of the
the Stone churche built by Ion Bob and of the Roman-Catholic parish of
St. John the Baptist, or those of the Toldalagi and Haller house, or the
late baroque, enriched with the classicist elements of the Royal tables,
the palaces of the downtown, built in Secession style or the Palace of
culture and the Town hall, built in a popular Secession style.
The western civilization, legitimately named by certain historians
as the European miracle, relies on two pillars, which seem to be the greatest
values of human history: Christian morals and Roman law. To the panorama
opening wide from the top of the Cornesti Plateau or from the Stone
Hill, a symbolical significance could be added, too: house, schools, public
buildings all enclosed by the polygon of the Gothic and Baroque spires
of churches, on the one hand, and by the buildings of justice, on the other
hand. This could be anywhere else from the Atlantic Ocean to Eastern Europe,
if the landscape marked by human creation, did not have a soul too, beyond
spirit, becoming thus individual and unique. 
The town was host of several diets, amongst which,
from a historical perspective, the one in 1571 gained a European significance,
by proclaiming confessional freedom in times shattered by religious wars
of western Europe. This soul-up-lifting example of tolerance is the most
important message of local history for posterity, of today's and tomorrow's
inhabitants of this region, Romanians and Hungarians, Orthodox, Chatolic,
Protestant, all inheritors of a spirituality ideal to substantiate a future
of normalcy.
