Carei

Carei is a city in Satu Mare County in northwestern Romania, close to the border with Hungary, about 99 kilometres from Oradea and 35 kilometres from the county seat at Satu Mare, on a plain in the south-western part of the county. It is known in Hungarian as Nagykároly. The city administers one village, Ianculești. Its first written mentions are as Karul in 1320 and Károly in 1325, though it is known to have existed since 1264 as the domain of the Kaplony clan and the centre of the personal estate of the Károlyi family. King Louis I permitted weekly Saturday markets in 1346 and King Sigismund raised it to county centre in 1387. It had turned Protestant by 1554 and Calvinist by 1567, and it is the birthplace of Gáspár Károli, who produced the first Hungarian translation of the Bible in 1586. In the eighteenth century Swabian families were settled here, and in 1780 it became the seat of Szatmár County. The 2021 census counted 18,957 residents, down from 20,775 in 2011.