page_title: Iași
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Iași / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Alecu Balș House , former French Institute for girls "Notre Dame de Sion" , Iaşi ,RomaniaRomână: Casa Alecu Balș , fostul Institut Francez de fete "Notre Dame de Sion" , Iaşi ,Romania This is a photo of a historic monument in județul Iași, classified with number IS-II-m-B-03846.02
context_page_description: Iași, also referred to as Jassy, is the second largest city in Romania, and the seat of Iași County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life. The city was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia from 1564 to 1859, then of the United Principalities from 1859 to 1862, and the capital of Romania from 1916 to 1918.
  Known as The Cultural Capital of Romania, Iași is a symbol in Romanian history. The historian Nicolae Iorga said "There should be no Romanian who does not know of it". Still referred to as The Moldavian Capital, Iași is the main economic and business centre of the Moldavian region of Romania. In December 2018, Iași was officially declared Historical capital of Romania.
  At the 2011 census, the city proper had a population of 290,422. With 500,668 residents, the Iași urban area is the second most populous in Romania, whereas more than 500,000 people live within its peri-urban area.
context_section_description: Major events in the political and cultural history of Moldavia are connected with the name of the city of Iași. The great scholars of the 17th century, Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin and later Ion Neculce, wrote most of their works in the city or not far from it and the famous scholar Dimitrie Cantemir known throughout all Europe also linked his name to the capital of Moldavia.
  The first newspaper in Romanian language was published in 1829 in Iași and it is in Iași where, in 1867, appeared under literary society Junimea, the Convorbiri Literare review in which Ion Creangă’s Childhood Memories and the best poems by Mihai Eminescu were published. The reviews Contemporanul and Viața Românească appeared in 1871, respectively in 1906 with great contributions to promoting Romanian national cultural values.
  Many great personalities of Romanian culture are connected to Iași: the chronicler Nicolae Milescu, the historians and politicians Mihail Kogălniceanu and Simion Bărnuțiu, the poets Vasile Alecsandri and George Topârceanu, the writers Mihail Sadoveanu, Alecu Russo, and Ionel Teodoreanu, the literary critic Titu Maiorescu, the historian A.D. Xenopol, the philosophers Vasile Conta and Petre Andrei, the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, the geographer Emil Racoviță and the painter Octav Băncilă, only to name a few.
caption: Alecu Balș House, where Franz Liszt performed in 1847, nowadays Moldova State Philharmonic
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