Baia Mare (US: /ˌbɑːjə ˈmɑːrə/ BAH-yə MAR-ə,[2][3] Romanian: [ˈbaja ˈmare] ⓘ; Hungarian: Nagybánya; German: Frauenbach or Groß-Neustadt; Latin: Rivulus Dominarum) is a city along the Săsar River, in northwestern Romania; it is the capital of Maramureș County.

Located south of the Igniș [ro] and Gutâi mountains, Baia Mare had a population of 108,759 at the 2021 census, and a metropolitan area home to about 200,000 residents.

[citation needed] Baia Mare is the greenest municipality in Romania, with 133 square meters of green space for each inhabitant.

Later, it was included in the Dacian Kingdom formed by the King Burebista when the mining exploration began, as the area is rich in gold and silver.

Baia Mare is first mentioned in written documents released by Charles I of Hungary in 1328 under the name of Rivulus Dominarum (English: Ladies' River).

In 1703 Pintea Viteazul and his band managed to free the town for a short period of time from the German Imperial rule, under which it belonged the royal treasury.

They persuaded Hollósy to join them and founded the Nagybánya artists' colony, working on naturalism and plein air painting.

[10] Following World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved, and in 1920, Baia Mare officially became part of the Kingdom of Romania.

Shortly after World War II in postwar development, the town of Baia Mare started to grow both in population and inhabited area.

[14] Since 2013, local Romanian (Romani) businessman Daniel Boldor has been operating out of the CUPROM mine and refinery outside of Baia Mare, selling what he claims are under-extracted Ore concentrate shipments to international metal traders in China, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States.

[15][16] Based on claims that the material was, in fact, worthless mining sludge, the public prosecutor's office in Constanța filed an indictment against Boldor in June 2018 on charges of money laundering, customs fraud, document forgery, the collection and transport of hazardous waste, and tax evasion.

[18] In 2011, the national anti-discrimination council fined mayor Cătălin Cherecheș for the building of the wall and ordered it to be pulled down.

[17] The coat of arms of Baia Mare was granted to the city by the Government in the late 1990s, early 2000s, some years after the communist symbols established in 1968 were de facto out of use starting 1989.

Proof of this is that the outskirts of Baia Mare are the only areas where you can find chestnut trees that usually need Mediterranean climate to grow.

The precipitations in this area are quite high, due to the mountains in the north and east which do not allow the air masses to pass beyond the region's limits, the average rainfall being almost 1,000 mm/year.

[22] Many inhabitants declared themselves as Hungarian-speakers during previous censuses, despite not being ethnic Hungarians Before the Second World War, Baia Mare had a community of more than 1,000 Jews.

The largest sofa manufacturing plant in Eastern Europe,[25] Italsofa, is located near the Baia Mare city highway ring.

[citation needed] In Baia Mare there is one library (with a few branches), 6 museums, one planetarium and observatory, 2 theaters, 2 cultural centers, one art school and one popular university.