Petrila (; hu, Petrilla) is a town in the

Jiu Valley The Jiu Valley ( ro, Valea Jiului ) is a region in southwestern Transylvania, Romania, in Hunedoara county, situated in a valley of the Jiu River between the Retezat Mountains and the Parâng Mountains. The region was heavily industrialised and th ...

Hunedoara County Hunedoara County () is a county (''județ'') of Romania, in Transylvania, with its capital city at Deva. The county is part of the Danube–Criș–Mureș–Tisa Euroregion. Name In Hungarian, it is known as , in German as , and in Slovak a ...

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Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

. It is located near the confluence of the rivers Jiul de Est, Taia, and Jieț. The town administers four villages: Cimpa (''Csimpa''), Jieț (''Zsiec''), Răscoala (''Reszkola''), and Tirici.

History

A Romanian town in the

Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretche ...

, Petrila is an ancient settlement, but its existence was not documented until 1493 in a donation letter between Vladislav the First, King of Hungary and a Romanian prince named Mihai Cande. The name of the town was noted in 1733 as coming from the Latin word “petrinus” ("pietros" in Romanian), which can be translated into English to mean “of stone”, a reference to the large

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

deposits in the area that would become a profitable export in the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. The exploitation of coal deposits in and around Petrila made the town grow as a single-industry town, revolving either around the mining of coal or the processing of the coal mined there, which is listed under the grade “Pitcoal”. Mining operations began in 1840, but the town would remain sparsely populated until the arrival of

Western Moldavia Moldavia ( ro, Moldova), also called Western Moldavia or Romanian Moldavia, is the historic and geographical part of the former Principality of Moldavia situated in eastern and north-eastern Romania. Until its union with Wallachia in 1859, the P ...

n workers forced to relocate by the former president of Romania

Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu ( , ; – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and dictator. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He ...

under Communist rule. The restructuring of the economy since the

Romanian Revolution The Romanian Revolution ( ro, Revoluția Română), also known as the Christmas Revolution ( ro, Revoluția de Crăciun), was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred ...

of 1989 has led to a decrease in production and supply for the region, including Petrila. It was the site in recent times of the Petrila Mine disaster, wherein two methane gas explosions in a coal mine on November 15, 2008 killed at least 12 miners and/or rescue workers. This is not the first time this millennium a coal mine in Petrila has suffered such an incident; another similar incident occurred in 2001.

Economy

The mining in the town began in 1840 and the peak production of coal was in 1984 1,255,240 tonnes, since then it decreased to 504,000 tonnes.

Population

As of 2011, it had a population of 21,373. Of these, 93.97% were Romanians, 4.9% Hungarians and 0.73% Roma.

Natives

* (1930–2015), composer * Ferenc Doór (1918–2015), painter * Alexandru Hrisanide (1936–2018 ), composer * Josef Kappl (b. 1950), rock musician * Horațiu Lasconi (b. 1963), footballer * Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu (1919–1989), philosopher and novelist *

Maria von Tasnady Maria von Tasnady (16 November 1911 – 16 March 2001) was a Hungarian singer, stage and film actress. She was born as Mária Tasnádi Fekete and used a variety of other professional names including Maria De Tasnady during her career. von Tasn ...

(1911–2001), actress * Daniel Timofte (b. 1967), footballer

References

External links