Iegar, Diana - Sárándi Tamás: Satu Mare. Amprentele trecutului (Satu Mare, 2009)
Introducere
PREFACE because they can introduce us into a fascinating, but not any more existing world of the city. Transformed streets, destroyed or rebuilt buildings - a world that is now past - are revealed by these cards, awakening memories, admiration or sometimes surprise. No other way of exposition can bring us so close to history as the realism of these photographic issues. During the Middle Ages, there were two settlements on the site of the present city of Satu Mare: Satu Mare and Mintiu. They were separated by the Someş river. The history of Satu Mare city is closely related to the existence and functioning of a fortress. Chronicler Anonymus was the first to give information about the fortress. According to his chronicle, written at the end of the 12th century, Castrum Zothmar was built in the 10th century. No solid evidence was preserved, however, about what happened with the fortress up to the 13th century, and even the site of the earth fortress has not been localized by archeologists yet. According to the few pieces of information we have, the castle was destroyed during the invasion of the Tatars in 1241-1242. Mintiu appears in the documents in the early 13th century, as a settlement of German colonists, who came to these area with Queen Gisela, wife of King Stephen I of Hungary. The history of the two cities separated by the Someş river is similar in many respects. However, Mintiu never had the same strategic and military importance as Satu Mare, in the absence of its own fortification. The determining factor in the evolution of Satu Mare city was the ford (later the bridge) across the Someş river. The twin cities of Satu Mare and Mintiu were situated along an arm of the Someş river, today drained, its transverse axis being determined by the road which the river crossed. In the 1560s a fortress with five bastions of Italian type was built at the border of Satu Mare city. The bend of the Someş river was cut by a channel, transforming this part into an island. The successive 18
