Romanian National Holiday

Unification Day

The 1st of December (Union Day) is the celebrated unification day with Transylvania in 1918.

Romania, formerly also spelled Roumania and Rumania, is a country located between Central Europe and Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south. At 238,391 square kilometers (92,043 sq mi), Romania is the eighth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with 20,121,641 people (20 October 2011). Its capital and largest city is Bucharest – the sixth largest city in the EU. The official language of Romania is Romanian, a Romance language related to Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Romanian is spoken as a first language by 91% of the population.

The United Principalities emerged when the territories of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. In 1866 Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was called to the throne as the Ruling Prince of the Romanian Principate and in 1881 he was finally crowned as King Carol I, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Romania. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognised the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania.