Gyula, Békés County, Southern Great Plain Region, Hungary

🇭🇺 Gyula is a town in Békés County, Hungary. The town is best known for its Medieval castle and a thermal bath. Ferenc Erkel, the composer of the Hungarian national anthem, and Albrecht Dürer the Elder, the father of Albrecht Dürer, were also born in Gyula.

Name Gyula is named after the medieval Hungarian warlord Gyula III. Gyula was also a title among the Hungarian tribes and still a common male given name.

In Romanian, the town is known as Jula or Giula, in German as Jula and in Turkish as Göle.

Geography Gyula is located in the Great Hungarian Plain on the River Fehér-Körös, 235 km (146 mi) south-east from Budapest and 5 km (3 mi) from the border with Romania. The Békéscsaba-Gyula-Kötegyán railway line and Highway 44 also cross the town. Highway 44 is a four-lane expressway between Gyula and the county seat Békéscsaba.

History The first recorded reference to Gyula was in a document dated 1313 which mentions a monastery called Gyulamonostora (Julamonustra in Latin). By 1332 the settlement around the monastery was called Gyula. The construction of Gyula Castle began in the 14th century but finished only in the mid-16th century. It was the property of the Maróthy family and later John Corvinus, the illegitimate son of Matthias Corvinus. Turks conquered Gyula in 1566 and the town remained part of the Ottoman Empire until liberated by Christian troops in 1694. Due to the wars, most of the native Hungarian population fled from Gyula and Békés County became near uninhabited. The landowner János Harruckern invited German, Hungarian, and Romanian settlers, who re-established the town in the early 18th century. In 1881, the town had 18,046 inhabitants, of which 12,103 were Hungarians, 2,608 Romanians, 2,124 Germans, 400 Slovaks and 811 of other ethnicities. Gyula became a popular tourist destination in the 20th century. The thermal bath was established in 1942 and expanded in 1959, and the castle was restored in 1962.

Demographics According to the 2011 census the total population of Gyula was 31,067, of whom there were 25,895 (83.4%) Hungarians, 974 (3.1%) Romanians, 971 (3.1%) Germans and 102 (0.3%) Romani by ethnicity. In Hungary, people can declare more than one ethnicity, so some people declared Hungarian and a minority one together.

Gyula is the centre of the small native Romanian community of Hungary. It has its own newspaper published in Gyula, Foaia Românească ("The Romanian Sheet"). Gyula also has a school for its Romanian population, the Nicolae Bălcescu Romanian Gymnasium, Primary School and College. Furthermore, the Diocese of Gyula, the Romanian Orthodox diocese serving the Romanians in Hungary, is seated in Gyula. The town itself hosts two Romanian Orthodox churches, the St. Nicholas Romanian Orthodox Cathedral [eo; pl; ro] and the St. Paraskeva Church. There is also a consulate general of Romania in Gyula.

In 2011 there were 5,726 (18.4%) Roman Catholic, 5,560 (17.9%) Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist), 606 (2.0%) Orthodox and 507 (1.6%) Lutheran in Gyula. 8,304 people (26.7%) were irreligious and 453 (1.5%) Atheist, while 9,012 people (29.0%) did not declare their religion.

Tourist attractions • Gyula Castle (Gyulai vár) • Thermal bath (Gyulai gyógyfürdő) • 100-year-old confectionery (100 éves cukrászda) • Town hall, 1861 (Városháza) • Birth house of Ferenc Erkel (Erkel Ferenc szülőháza) • Saint Michael Cathedral, 1825 (Szent Miklós katedrális) • Roman Catholic church, 1775-1777 (Római katolikus templom) • Roman Catholic chapel, 1738–1752, (Római katolikus kápolna)