Macea (; ) is a commune in

Arad County Arad County () is an administrative division ( județ) of Romania roughly translated into county in the western part of the country on the border with Hungary, mostly in the region of Crișana and few villages in Banat. The administrative cente ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, composed of two villages, Macea and Sânmartin (''Szentmárton'', ''Aradsanktmartin''). The commune is located in the western part of the county, on the border with

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, at a distance of from

Curtici Curtici ( Hungarian: ''Kürtös'', German: ''Kurtitsch'') is a town located in Arad County, in western Romania. The town is situated at a distance from the county capital, Arad, in the western part of Arad County. It is the most important railwa ...

and from the county seat, Arad.

Population

According to the 2011 census, the population of the commune counts 5,762 inhabitants, out of which 84.24% are Romanians, 5.97% Roma, 2.43% Hungarians, 1.44% Germans, and 5.64% are of other or undeclared nationalities.

History

Although the traces of inhabitance on this place are very old, traces from the Neolithic and from the Bronze Age having been found on its territory, Macea was first mentioned in documents only in 1380, while Sânmartin in 1477.

Economy

The commune's present-day economy can be characterized by a powerful dynamic force with significant developments in all the sectors present in the commune. Livestock-breeding based on cattle-growing and pig-raising is the main economic branch, due to which food industry is well-developed in the commune.

Tourism

Tourist sites include the natural reservation called "''Arboretul de la Macea''", which covers and area of . The Macea Castle (also called Csernovics Castle) is an architectural monument belonging to the national patrimony, built in the 19th century, the ''exhibition room with caricatures'', well as the beach and the ''botanical garden''. Macea village gives home to a ''festival of caricature'' and humour every year.

Summer school

Since 2003, the Macea Castle is the home of "Informatica la Castel" annual event (formerly "

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and Virtual Learning Environments", LVLE), a

Free Software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

summer school organised by the Vasile Goldiș Western University of Arad and ARLUG, the Arad Linux Users Group.

Gallery

Image:Castelul de la Macea, Arad.jpg, Macea Castle Image:Castelul de la Macea, Arad2.jpg, Macea Castle Image:Castelul de la Macea, Arad3.jpg, Macea Castle

References

Communes in Arad County Localities in Crișana {{Arad-geo-stub