A busy transportation hub on the Mureș River and an important cultural and industrial center, Arad has hosted one of the first music conservatories in Europe,[3][4] one of the earliest normal schools in Europe,[5] and the first car factory in Hungary and present-day Romania.

The city's multicultural heritage is owed to the fact that it has been part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, the Ottoman Temeşvar Eyalet, Principality of Transylvania, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and since 1920 Romania, having had significant populations of Hungarians, Germans, Jews, Serbs, Bulgarians[7] and Czechs[8] at various points in its history.

The most impressive displays of architecture that are still the popular sights of Arad today, such as the neoclassical Ioan Slavici Theater, the eclectic Administrative Palace and the neogothic Red Church, were built in this period.

[9] During national communism and Dacianism, the ancient Ziridava fortress name was to be added to Arad in a similar way as Napoca was to Cluj, (Cluj-Napoca) but this was not done.

[10] The evidence of Pre-Indo-European civilisation occurs with the establishment of the first settlement on the northern bank of the Mureş River in the 5th millennium BC, and the extension of the human settlements on the left bank of the Mureş River occurs in the 4th millennium BC.

Excavations made for the foundations of the Astoria Hotel found a human skeleton from the Bronze Age.

During the Second Dacian War (105–106), the Emperor Trajan conquered territories north of Mureş River, making them part of the Roman Dacia.

During the period between the 2nd and 4th centuries Dacian and Sarmatian settlements were present in the area of today's city, with intense commercial relations with the Roman Empire.

In the 10th century the Hungarians began their expansion in Transylvania, one of the main access routes being the valley of Mureş.

According to the Chronicon Pictum, at "an assembly of the realm near Arad"[12] in early to mid-1131, Queen Helena ordered the slaughter of all noblemen who were accused of having suggested the blinding of her husband to King Coloman.

[15] The Mongol invasion of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1241 showed the importance of the fortifications on this place, to which were added in the second half of the 13th century more stone fortresses at Șoimoș, Șiria, and Dezna.

The Ottoman Empire conquered the region from Hungary in 1551 and kept it until the Peace of Karlowitz of 1699, although during this period it was temporarily reintegrated in the Principality of Transylvania after the Transylvanian troops cleared the lower valley of the Mureș in 1595; and after the victory of Mihai Viteazu's troops at Șelimbăr, the city entered under the Voivode's authority.

It was from Arad that Lajos Kossuth issued his famous proclamation (11 August 1849), and where he handed over the supreme military and civil power to Artúr Görgey.

[21] During World War I, the Austro-Hungarian authorities set up an internment camp in the Fortress of Arad in which around 4,000 Serb detainees died.

[22] → 1868 – Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu came to Arad as a prompter for Matei Millo's theatre company.

The ethnic composition of the city of Arad changed according to the realities of the aftermath of the World War I, as the new Hungary–Romania border was drawn by an international commission[28] overseen by the French cartographer Emmanuel de Martonne, that wanted to have the respective ethnicites on different sides, but at the same time advocated maintaining certain transport connections to the individual new countries[29] even if it meant to keep certain towns and villages "on the wrong side of the border“.

[30] In the past, according to the 1880 census, whilst still in Austro-Hungarian Empire, of the 35,556 inhabitants, 19,896 were Hungarians (56%), 6,439 Romanians (18.1%), 5,448 Germans (15.3%), 1,690 Serbs (4.8%) and 2,083 (5.9%) of other ethnicities.

The team's most notable performance on the international stage is the elimination from the European Champions Cup of Ernst Happel's Feyenoord in the 1970–71 season, when the Dutch team were defending European champions and later won the Intercontinental Cup.