Timișoara: the first free city of the 1989 revolution

The Union Square, with its Habsburg baroque façades, remains the architectural heart of the city that earned it the nickname 'little Vienna'.

Steps away, the Metropolitan Orthodox Cathedral, with eleven colored domes, dominates the city's skyline with its modern Byzantine architecture.

Moving forward one visits Victory Square, where in December 1989 protests began that led to the fall of the Romanian communist regime.

Towards evening, the Fabric district, a former industrial area, animates with bars and restaurants frequented by the student population.

Timișoara was the first Romanian city to openly rebel against Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime in December 1989, an uprising that quickly spread throughout the country and toppled the dictator in mere days.

The city was also the first in Europe to introduce electric street lighting in 1884, a distinction that reflects its history as a modern and cosmopolitan center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before Vienna and Budapest.