Salonta

Salonta is a city in Bihor County in the Crișana region of north-western Romania, close to the border with Hungary. At the 2021 census it had 15,792 inhabitants, down from 17,042 in 2011, and the 2011 population was mostly Hungarian with a large Romanian minority. It was first documented in 1214 as Zolonta, and until the sixteenth century it was a village of about 300 people on land of the Toldi family. It gained importance after 1606, when Stephen Bocskai of Transylvania settled 300 soldiers there on land grants, and the city celebrates that settlement date, 3 June, as its day. Ottoman forces held it from 1660 to 1692. The Hungarian poet János Arany lived most of his life there, and the author Lajos Zilahy was born there in 1891. After the First World War it passed to Romania under the Treaty of Trianon, was returned to Hungary in 1940 by the Second Vienna Award, and went back to Romania in 1944 and 1945.